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A Present Day Arraignment of Formalism and 
Doubt in the Church and in Society, in 
the Light of the Holy Scriptures. 

Given in the Form of a 
Pleasing Story 

BY 

REV. MILTON H. STINE. Ph.D., D.D. 

u 

Author of 

"Studies on the Religious Problem of Our Country," "A 
Winter Jaunt Through Historic Lands," "Seven 
Golden Candle-Sticks," Etc. 


ILLUSTRATED BY 

PAUL KRAFFT 


Published by 
THE MINTER COMPANY 
Harrisburg, Pa. 


SOLD BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY 


i 

u 


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand nine hundred ten 

By LUTHER MINTER 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.. U. S. A. 


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



©CU27:j»::i5 


DEDICATION. 

To those ”who believe the prophets” 
and ”who by patient continuance in 
well doing seek for glory and honor 
and immortality,” and particularly to 
those who have given these great sub- 
jects of prophecy no thought, this book 
is affectionately dedicated. 



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I k 







Men hold various opinions concerning the char- 
acter and drift of human history. Some hold that 
human affairs began in a bad way, that they have 
been going from bad to worse, and that the ulti- 
mate must be disaster. The coursn of history ac- 
cording to their views is typified by the course of 
the mountain stream which begins in the melting 
snows and thawing ices, and which being no 
sooner loosed from its frosty fetters, is tossed over 
jagged rocks, and hurled down dizzy precipices. 
Then it is churned in fearfully whirling eddies, or 
it gathers itself from the spray into which it was 
dissolved, only to undergo renewed buffeting. If 
at times it seems to flow in a well-ordered channel, 
it is only the precursor to renewed dashing and 
churning. In the end the stream will be swallowed 
by the thirsty sands of the arid plain. This is pes- 
simism. 

To others the stream of human history is differ- 
ent in its final results. They admit all the pes- 
simist says with regard to the origin of the stream, 
rv;i 


Vi 


INTRODUCTION 


and its experiences during the centuries of its flow, 
but they maintain that the stream is now, in the 
age in which we live, just entering the quiet 
meadow where it will forever gladden with its life- 
giving waters which gradually are widening into 
the placid lake whose waters will always be kept 
fresh and pure by the result of the experiences of 
the centuries of its course. Here its bosom will 
never be agitated by storms. Its placid waters 
will be the source of gentle showers and pearly 
dews. Its surface will shine like a sea of glass in 
the propitious sunlight, and at night its quiet 
bosom will mirror the stars. This is optimism. 

There are still others who hold in part the views 
of both the former, but they insist that the divine 
mind has planned the origin and course of the 
stream. That He has uses for the waters far be- 
yond the mountains of our limited vision, uses of 
which we have little thought or conception. These 
hold that His hand constantly guides the stream. 
That the rocks and precipices in its course are 
there by His permission, and give the stream its 
force and power. The stream has always moved 
in channels of His cutting. 

To this last class the author of these pages be- 
longs. He does not maintain that ‘^History is a 
colossal Sodom and Gomorrah whose foul egotism 
breeds ever vaster woe and despair; and that the 
nre and brimstone which wiped out the cities of 
the plain are to be regarded as angels of mercy 


INTRODUCTION 


Vll 


and tj-pes of the final whirlwinds that shall roll all 
human wretchedness into the peace of extinction. 
According to this view, death is the redeemer of 
mankind. ^ ’ 

The author of these pages believes both the 
record of profane and sacred history. He believes 
that the former describes marvelous changes, slow 
progress, but progress still, toward an ultimate 
goal, a golden age to come. He believes for ex- 
ample, that because of the brief regency of Oliver 
Cromwell, the conceptions of human freedom 
among the English people and consequently 
throughout the race, have been nobler; and that 
these conceptions because of the work of Cromwell 
have been easier of attainment. So too, freedom 
of thought and speech, and the purer worship of 
God, because of the life and work of Luther, have 
become the heritage of the age in which we are now 
living. We maintain that however determiningly 
the arm of oppression and wrong may strike in the 
future, it will be impossible to undo what these 
and hundreds of others have done for humanity. 

But whilst we believe the record of profane his- 
tory and assertions of those who reason from these 
records, that the victories of truth are permanent, 
we also believe the record of sacred history and 
the lessons it teaches, namely that in the history 
of the race, God has again and again visited the 
world in judgment. In one or two of these great 
visitations He utterly destroyed the human race 


INTRODUCTION 


viii 

with the exception of eight persons ; on the other 
occasion He confounded their speech and scattered 
the race. This He did, too, at a time of the high- 
est scientific development, as both the ark of Noah 
and the tower of Babel prove. 

We believe the statement in Holy Writ, that 
when Sodom and Gk)morrah were destroyed, ‘ ^ the 
Lord rained upon them brimstone and fire out of 
heaven,’’ and that when Israel was delivered from 
the bondage of the Egyptians, God, at the com- 
mand of Moses, permitted the powers of evil to 
multiply until blessings became plagues, and ordi- 
nary annoyances became malignant and death- 
dealing. Because we believe that God himself 
punished unbelief and disobedience in the past, 
regardless of scientific development and the 
spread of knowledge, therefore we believe He will 
punish unbelief and sin in the future. We believe 
that God who once punished idolatry and other 
sins will also punish idolatry and sin in the future. 
He will punish the individual who perpetrates the 
sin and the nations who permit the perpetration. 
Sun worship and image worship and the consult- 
ing of familiar spirits are just as obnoxious now 
as they were ages ago when they did not have at- 
tached to them the boasted culture and refinement 
that they have to-day. In this belief and because 
of the assurance that, ‘^not one jot or tittle shall 
in any wise pass from the law and the prophets 
until all be fulfilled,” this volume was written. 


INTKODUCTION 


IX 


Nor can we believe that the judgments spoken 
of in the prophets as yet to be visited upon the 
children of disobedience are far in the future. 
There is no more reason for maintaining this than 
there is reason to believe that when these judg- 
ments begin to come the world at large will be 
looking for them, and believe that they are sent 
from God. 

In the hope that this little volume may cause the 
evil-doer to stop and think upon his evil ways, and 
that it may stimulate the doer of righteousness in 
the course he has taken, this book is sent upon its 
tnission. 



The writer of ‘^Dr. Knowit or the End of the 
Age/^ means that the book of Eevelation, and the 
Epistles, especially PauEs first Epistle to Tim- 
othy, depict events and the -state of society at the 
close of the age in which we are now living. He 
believes with many orthodox interpreters, that the 
book of Eevelation delineates real occurrences 
and that its language is not ‘^highly figurative,’’ 
as is so often asserted by those who try t® explain 
away the solemn warnings and events of the book. 
We have no reason to believe that the word, 
“Earthquake,” when used by St. John in Eevela- 
tion does not mean the same that it means when 
used by the scientist or in the newspaper; and 
that, “As it were a great mountain burning with 
fire,” (Eev. 8:8) is “As it were a great mountain 
burning with fire, ’ ’ a great meteor, falling into the 
sea and causing just what St. John says. 

In other words, the events recorded in Dr. 
Knowit are copied from the book of ‘ ^ Eevelation. ’ ’ 
The characters of the book give us an idea of the 
(x) 


EXPLANATION. 


XI 


condition of human society in those awful days 
which will mark the close of this present age. Some 
of the scenes and characters of this book are in- 
tended to correct the almost universal error; 
namely, that education, culture, eradicate the evils 
of society. In Dr. Knowit himself we have an ex- 
ample of what will then be the popular preacher. 
We see how utterly powerless he is in the hour of 
trial, whether in his own life or those who are led 
by his doctrine. 

The book follows closely the sixth, eighth and 
ninth chapters of Eevelation, first Timothy, 4:1, 
etc. The author does not however believe that the 
saints pass through the tribulation. He believes 
according to the analogy of Scripture and the ex- 
pressed statements in the New Testament that the 
saints escape the Great Tribulation.^^ The book 
was written to warn and enlighten men and wo- 
men in the church and outside of it, in the hope 
that it may be the means of enlightening, convinc- 
ing and convicting souls ^^Dead in trespass and 
Sin,’’ in these closing years of the Church Mili- 
tant. 



CONTENTS. 


4 


CHAPTER L 

^‘The Sun Was Daekened.’’ 

The beginning of stupendous occurrences — The specu- 
lation of Scientists — ^The heat and its effects — Sudden 
darkness which continues for more than 24 hours — This 
is followed by a rain of meteors — Contrasted with other 
meteoric showers — Description of the conflagration started 
by the meteors — The terror inspired 37 

CHAPTER II. 

!‘Wise in His Own Conceit.’’ 

The church in the days of which we are speaking — The 
Rev. Dr. Knowit — A typical and popular pastor — ^His 
Creed and practice — Miss Dolent, one of his members ; but 
not of his Creed' — Her pious father — An important con- 
versation. 48 

CHAPTER III. 

^^Some Shall Depart From the Faith.” 

A view of the state of society at the time of these events 
— The repeal of Sabbath laws — The neglect of the Sanc- 
tuary — Formality and Doubt in the Pulpit and the Pew — 
Boasted Gloodness 55 


(xiii) 


XIV 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTEE IV. 

“Eveky Mountain and Island Weke Moved Out 
OF Their Place. 

Dr. Knowit in a brown study — He visits Talitha Cumi 
— His conversation with Grace Dolent — The return home, 
and the strange phenomena witnessed on the way — A great 
earthquake 65 

CHAPTER V. 

‘‘The Love of Money is a Root of Evil.” 

A meeting of men of importance in the Commercial 
World — What the Oil Ttust accomplished — Far-eighted 
Capitalists — The Marked Company — Some dire effects of 
the Trusts 75 


CHAPTER VI. 

“Familiar Spirits.^’ 

Spiritism — A Man must be his own Saviour — Who “the 
Spirits’’ really are — Is it possible to communicate with 
Spirits — Spiritism is idolatry — “Most delightful conver- 
sation with a Spirit” — A man’s spirit can leave the body 
before death and the body not die.” 83 

CHAPTER VII. 

“Rest a While.” 

A resume of the effetcs of the earthquaike — The effects 
on Hospitals — The weather during the following Sum- 
— Grace Dolent takes a vacation — Two ways in which 
to rest — Grace’s way — Something more about Dr. Know- 



CHAPTER VIII. 

“Hail and Fire Mingled With Blood.” 

The contrast between the pious and consecrated Grace 
Dolent and the preacher of the hour— Evolution, Material- 


CONTENTS 


XV 


istic and Christian — Speculations of Science and the 
Statements of the Bible with regard to the future — De- 
velopments in the Orient — The new Babylon — A Center 
of World Commerce — A Great Catastrophe 106 

CHAPTER IX. 

^‘The Marriage Supper and the Prodigal. 

A wedding in high life — The feast — The strange visitor 
— The excitement incident to his appearance and his 
hastened departure — A forlorn woman and her child — 
Only a rose — ^Picked up 124 

CHAPTER X. 

Divine Unto Me by the Familiar Spirit.’^ 

A messenger — A great sorrow — The Gregories* disappear 
— Dr. Knowit visits Mrs. DeLisle — A medium — A seance 
— The sprit-head and what it reveals — Mrs. DeLisle 
swoons — Dr. Knowit is convinced 132 

CHAPTER XI. 

^^A Little Child Shall Lead Them.^' 

The mission receives a new inmate — A dead child — ^A 
life history — A new life in the midst of sinful surround- 
ings — ^A friend. 141 


CHAPTER XII. 

Perplexed.^' 

What brings crises in the lives of nations and of in- 
dividuals — A detective — His advice — An anxious father 
and his more anxious daughter — Starting for home — Lost 
on the way — Great sorrow 147 


Xvi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Doeth Great Wonders.^’ 

DeLisle’s rheumatism and bow it was cured — DeLisle 
is persuaded to see a Christian Science practitioner — A 
stormy interview — Fire and Smoke — ^Agility — Keconcili- 
ation and Salvation 155 

CHAPTER XIV. 

‘‘Many Shall Come in My Name and Shall 
Deceive Many. ’ ^ 

The Christian Scientist visits Mrs. DeLisle — He thinks 
he has made a convert — Why he did not convert Grace 
Dolent — Christian Science denies that God made man of 
the dust of the earth — That Christ is the Divine person — 
That be ransomed men — That the Holy Spirit is a per- 
son — That men sin — It denies petitioning a personal 
deity 162 


CHAPTER XV. 

“Have the Gates of Hell Been Opened.^' 

A new calamity — A great chasm in the earth — What 
came out of it — A pall covers the earth — A demon-locust — 
Universality of the plague — When most active — Methods 
adopted to escape them — Many victims — Worlds of dark- 
ness and beings of diabolical }x)wer not far away 171 

CHAPTER XVI. 

“Evil Shall Slay the Wicked.^’ 

Another visit to the medium — A supernatural visitor — 
A tragedy — The end of the Madam 179 


CONTENTS 


XVll 


CHAPTER XVIL 

^ ^ Let Us Love One Anotheb : For Love is of 
God.’’ 

Affinity — The controlling purpose of a regenerate life 
— 'The basis of an abiding affinity — How demon-locusts be- 
came possible — ^Love and friendship — The relation of 
prayer to Creed — How a young life was wrecked — The 
wages of sin 184 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

Knowledge Shall be Increased.” 

^^The blue-eyed three” — ‘^The haven of rest” — A great 
invention — An astonished inmate — ^What he saw about 
him — His life a partial blank — An educated villain. . . 194 

CHAPTER XIX. 

^‘It is Sport to a Fool to do Mischief.” 

On the way — Shadowed — In the power of a stranger — 
Carried whither she would not go — In new surroundings — 
Oblivious to all — ^Scientific progress not a guarantee to 
moral progress 204 


CHAPTER XX. 

There is a Way Which Seemeth Right Unto a 
Man But the Ends Thereof Are the Ways 
OF Death.” 

Betrothed and bereaved — How a noble charity was bom 
— Who became its guardians — Dr. Knowit and Talitha 
Cumi — His opinion of Grace Dolent — Something more 

about demon-locusts — A distinguished victim 210 

2 


xviii 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER XXI. 

‘‘Tormented.^’ 

Dr. Knowit a sufferer — Tears and sleep — A miessenger 
— A skeptical doctor — His experience — A horrid shape and 
what it did 218 


CHAPTER XXII. 

‘‘A Foolish Son is the Heaviness of His 
Mother. ’ ’ 

A history of the DeLisle family — Gold and guilt — Ex- 
pelled from home — The devil a discriminating master — 
A coachman’s distinguished guests — In the home but not 
of it — Tears, Eden’s spray 225 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

‘‘A Fugitive anb a Vagabond.'^ 

A resume of some events and their impression on De- 
Lisle — ‘^Tramp must leave” — A painful meeting — A 
heavy burden for a mother’s heart — How the world heard 
of Mrs. DeLisle’s loss — Mr. DeLisle ^Taken.” 235 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

‘^The Mark of the Beast.” 

Man’s inhumanity to man — Xot created to turn to 
stone — Hardening processes of lust and greed — The ve- 
neer worn away — &>asts of science — Fruite of philosophy 
which explain away Revelation — How a union of religion 
and business are brought about — Fabulous wealth and 
damnation — Hellish skill in ferretting out the business of 
others — An awful situation 242 


CONTENTS 


XIX 


CHAPTER XXV. 

‘^The Teeasurers of Wickedness Profit 
Nothing.^’ 

Order and taste in the “haven of rest” — How scientific 
knowledge helped evil-doers — 'Mrs. Gregory “awake” — A 
surprise and a joy — Notes compared — The paradoxes of 
money — Watched — The manager and what he proposed — 
Mr. Gregory signs — An awful threat 253 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

‘Wain is the Help of Man.'^ 

The strange power of Dr. Knowit — The “over-pious” 
Grace — The influence of Grace over Mrs. DeLisle — How 
the presence of woman charmed Mr. DeLisle — ^When the 
demon of his agony left him he jested and scoffed as be- 
fore — The sympathy of Grace for Dr. Knowit and his 
strange conduct — The effect of the demon-locusts on 
church going 261 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

‘ ‘ The Snare is Broken and we are Escaped. ^ ’ 

A fruitless search — ^Their fatal mistake — A careful 
search — The search in detail and what it revealed — A 
telegram and what it brought — Caution characteristic of 
policeman — W aiting 267 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

“Persecuted for Righteousness Sake.^^ 

Peace in nature brings confidence to man; but not re- 
pentance toward God — ^A brave man’s arraignment of the 
cults and isms of his day — The reward he received.. .276 


XX 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

^^Thb Path of the Just is as the Shining Lioht 
That Shineth More and More Unto the 
Perfect Day.^^ 

Something more about Grace Dolent’e work — Mrs. De- 
Lisle becomes champion and helper — The end of George 
DeLisle — ^Dr. Knowit resigns and disappears — The Greg- 
oriee quit the ^‘haven of rest^’ — How the blue-eyed three 
escaped 283 


CHAPTER XXX. 

“As IT Was in the Days of Noah.^^ 

Gregory and DeLisle — Mrs. Gregory captured by a 
worse foe — A great plague — The failure of science — The 
last interview between husband and wife — The valiant 
knight and his bride — ‘Tn the moment in the twinkle of 
an eye.'^ 292 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

“He That is Unjust Let Him be Unjust Still 
AND He Which is Filthy Let Him be 
Filthy Still. 

Eecapitulation — The forces that brought about destruc- 
tion — Corruption of the home — ^Destruction of marriage 
— Denying the faith — Denying providence and the power 
of prayer— Demonology— Secularization of the Sabbath- 
Apostasy — The DeviFs Bride 299 


CHAPTEE I. 




=THE= 


“SUN WAS DARKENED” 

^IllMllllllUiUttlhMlUllUiilllltUiiMlIlaiillllllliillllllllillllllKiUlillllillllllliillllllllilllltlliilllllUiillllllUUllihlMllllllliiltllllUillllllli itllltllnUlli^ 


It is toward the close of a sultry afternoon in 
August, 19 . An excursion steamer is lazily 

creeping up New York bay. The boat is gay with 
banners and flags and a band of music is rendering 
airs appropriate to the occasion. We are not par- 
ticularly interested in the excursion, nor in the 
music, but we have called attention to it because 
there are two persons on board who do not form a 
part of the original body of excursionists, but 
who have boarded the boat at its last calling place 
and who are now on their way to New York. The 
two persons mentioned are a young man and a 
young woman. The man is a clergyman, and the 
woman is the pretty and beloved matron of a 
home for fallen women in the city to which they 
are going. Because the times of which we are 
speaking are illustrated in the lives of these two 

(37) 


38 


THE ‘‘sun was darkened/^ 


persons and in the lives of those with whom they 
oome in contact, we call attention to this young 
man and woman at the opening of this narrative. 

For a month the sun had been shining with more 
than its usual power and brilliancy. Scientists 
say that whilst it is true that the earth is receiv- 
ing more light and heat proportionately than it 
has been receiving for the last twenty years, it is 
only what is to be expected after the long period 
of sun spots which for decades have been exces- 
sive, and which have been the cause of the intense 
cold. The people can now expect an end of the ex- 
cessively cold winters which have made life for 
man and beast almost unbearable. 

It is true that for the whole period of sim spots 
here spoken of, the winters were rigorous, but the 
summers were correspondingly cool, and conse- 
quently pleasant for the toiler and pleasure seeker 
alike. The seasons had been unfruitful because 
of the cold. The great cold froze the buds and the 
insect pests killed the trees. It is for this reason 
and because of insects so small that they could 
scarcely be detected by the naked eye, that whole 
districts, both in the Old and New World, missed 
the pleasant and healthful fruits. The cereals, 
such as corn, wheat and rye, were abundant, not- 
withstanding the cold winters. This was owing to 
the fact that the roots and leaflets were well pro- 
tected by the heavy snows which covered the earth 
from November to April. 


39 


THE ‘‘sun was DAEKENED/^ 

But to return to the afternoon of which we have 
spoken at the beginning of this chapter; it had 
been excessively hot all the day. The thermometers 
everywhere registered the highest temperature of 
any day during the season. Out in the dry, hard 
parched fields the earth glowed like an oven. The 
birds sat silently among the branches of the trees 
in field and forest. The cattle stood massed in 
the shadows, and every now and then gave utter- 
ance to low lowings as if they were conscious that 
the hour of their destruction had come. The hus- 
bandman was not astir in the fields but remained 
in the coolest part of the house or in the thickest 
shadow of some tree or arbor until the sun would 
incline toward the horizon. 

In the cities and in fact in the country as well, 
the mortality during the whole summer had' been 
far in excess of that of other seasons ; and this also 
was because of the existing atmospheric condi- 
tions. During this the hottest week of the sum- 
mer, death reaped largest harvests ; but notwith- 
standing, the driving lash of greed and necessity 
kept man and beast at work until both alike gasped 
for breath or sank helplessly to the earth. The 
great blocks along city streets radiated the heat 
like so many glowing furnaces, silently expressive 
of the fact that behind their walls, men and wo- 
men, and above all, helpless children, were endur- 
ing the anguish incident to the combined causes of 
poverty and the great heat. 


40 


THE ^^SUN WAS DARKENED^’ 

This afternoon, when the people everywhere ex- 
pected the snn to continue in its burning brilliancy 
for several hours longer, and believed that the 
evening would wear away slowly into the night 
without the least diminution of the discomforts 
incident to a hot day, suddenly and unexpectedly 
a great change took place. The sun began to lose 
its brilliancy, and shone as if her rays passed 
through thick clouds of smoke and dust, and yet 
such was not the case ; for the atmosphere was not 
more than usually dense with one or the other. The 
darkness continued to deepen until long before 
sun-set it was dark as deepest twilight. By and by 
the sun faded entirely out of sight, so that when it 
finally did set no one was conscious of the fact. 
The atmosphere was not cooled by this untimely 
swallowing of the day by the night. The long hours 
of the evening were sultry. It was the time of full 
moon. The people expected relief from the un- 
canny darkness when the hour for the moon ^s ap- 
pearance arrived ; but when it rose, instead of the 
genial silvery disk in whose light age and youth 
alike had formerly rejoiced, there was an orb of 
blood, dark, dim, portentous, awe inspiring. 

It is needless to say that the world ^s people slept 
little that night. The phenomena in different lands 
were largely the same. The telegraph offices made 
known the phenomena attending the approaching 
darkness in different cities and towns of the 
world. The high towers, stations for wireless teleg- 


THE ‘‘sun was DAEKENED/’ 41 

rapliy, confirmed with their messages from steam- 
ers far out at sea, what the old wires spoke of 
darkness and fear on land. 

Scientists in the world’s centres of learning 
were met by groups of students and crowds of 
anxious, terrified men and women eagerly asking 
the supposed causes for the strange phenomena. 
But the scientists had no satisfactory explanation 
to offer for the strange events. They tried to as- 
sure people that very much the same phenomena 
had been witnessed, not so universally, it is true, in 
May, 1789, when a wonderously dark day was ex- 
perienced throughout the north-eastern part of the 
iUnited States. It, too, had not been caused by an 
eclipse of the sun, for the moon, then, as now, was 
almost full. Neither had it been owing to a cloud- 
ed condition of the sky, for the stars were visible. 
Yet it was so dark from nine o’clock in the morn- 
ing, through the usual hours of the day, that the 
fowls remained on their roost, and candles had to 
be lighted to discharge the necessary business of 
the day. 

All, therefore, the more eagerly awaited the 
dawn of the day than the rising of the moon. But 
the hour of dawn was very little different from the 
darkness of the night. The sun, it is true, arose at 
the usual time, but it was veiled as with the sack- 
cloth of a Bedouin’s tent. It was shorn of the 
brilliancy and the heat alike, of the former mid- 
day. Some people remained in their beds, in dum^ 


42 


THE “SUN WAS DARKENED.’' 


terror, all the day. It is true here and there, men 
and women endeavored to quiet their fears and 
wear away the tedium of the hours by gathering in 
companies to dance and to play cards, and amuse 
themselves as best they could ; but there was no 
mirth in their laughter, and no fun in their at- 
tempts at frolic. Some clergymen in almost every 
city and hamlet announced in the morning papers 
that they would read prayers for those who were 
inclined to come to their respective churches, but 
in those same papers they spoke of the darkness 
as being one of those strange phenomena of nature 
which scientific men were as yet unable to explain. 
It is almost needless to say that the services in 
the churches were not largely attended. 

For the most part, business was at a standstill. 
There was very little traffic in the streets, and few 
customers in the shops and stores. Men who had 
not been allowed to have a Sabbath day’s rest for 
years, although at their place of employment now, 
found little or nothing to employ their time. In 
fact, the whole world was terrorized, and its busi- 
ness paralyzed, although men were unwilling to 
acknowledge it. 

So the weary hours of the twenty-four wore 
away. It continued as dark at noon as it had been 
at twilight of the morning. The sun was robed in 
ominous red and blood all day. But at the usual 
time for darkness to veil the skies, and when the 
deepest gloom was expected the night became little 


43 


THE ‘‘sun was darkened.’^ 

different from other nights. The moon was blood 
red, when it emerged from behind a bank of dark 
clouds, but the stars shone with their usual bril- 
liancy, thus making the phenomena of a darkened 
sun and moon all the more wonderful and inex- 
plicable. 

Whatever the world may have expected, it was 
scarcely prepared for that which did occur that 
night. As the evening wore away into the darkness 
of night, a lone watcher, in one of the important 
observatories of the United States, saw a great 
meteor dart from out the depth of space and wing 
its way across the heavens, illuminating both earth 
and sky with an almost supernatural splendor. 
This must have been the signal on the part of some 
great, yea, supernatural being, to call the atten- 
tion of the whole world to what was now about 
to follow. Scarcely had the great meteor exploded 
in the mid-heaven, leagues above the earth, with a 
force which seemed to shake the very foundations 
of the world, and with a noise that was perfectly 
terrifying, and which was heard by many millions 
of people, before, from behind the brilliancy of 
what seemed to have been a veritable planet, myr- 
iads of meteors came darting forward, so that 
the stars themselves seemed to have deserted their 
spheres, and worlds from the unexplored depths of 
space seemed to be hurled toward the earth. These 
meteors left behind them great sheets of flame, 
which either because of the heat produced by their 


44 


THE ^‘SUN WAS DAKKENED/^ 

darting in different directions through the atmos- 
phere or for some other unexplained reason, rolled 
like great sheets of most brilliant flame until the 
, heavens seemed wrapped and warped into scrolls 
’ which must finally be consumed into darkness and 
leave the immeasurable fields of space void as they 
were before God created the heavens and the 
earth. 

This was not the first meteoric shower witnessed 
within the history of man. A marvelous display of 
this class was witnessed the night of November 
13th, 1833. This shower continued only for three 
hours, but hundreds were thrown into the utmost 
confusion, and were convinced that the end of the 
world had come. Then fiery balls as luminous and 
as numerous as the stars, came darting after each 
other from the sky with vivid streaks of light, 
trailing in the track of each. All who saw it bore 
witness that it was a vivid and terrifying spec- 
tacle. 

But the meteoric display of which wo are speak- 
ing was as much more vivid as the arc light is more 
vivid than the tallow dip, or the cannon booming 
forth its shot and shell, is more destructive than 
the toy pistol. The shower of 1833 was compara- 
tively short in its duration, but this one continued 
all night and was followed with most disastrous 
consequences. Many fragments reached the waters 
of ocean, lake and river, and when their fiery heat 
was quenched in the waters which they sent spray- 


45 


THE ^^SUN WAS DARKENED/’ 

ing, boiling and steaming high into t^e air, the 
noise was terrifying in the extreme. In many in- 
stances the meteors struck houses and other build- 
ings, and caused devastating fires. In several cities 
the fire got beyond the control of the fire depart- 
ments. The awesome clangor of the midnight 
alarm is repeated from every quarter of a great 
city, the red terror of the flames is reflected upon 
the heavens, more awesome than the shower of fire 
which it causes to pale into insignificance. The 
disorganized and utterly inadequate forces of the 
fire fighters are isolated here and there and the 
red ruins sweep uncontrolled, save by the chance 
direction of the roaring gale. Great bales of blaz- 
ing dry goods and fragments of roof are carried 
through the air. The brick walls glow red hot upon 
the outside and the towering steel frames of the 
office buildings, buckling and twisting in the roar- 
ing furnace, curve and bow majestically^ and 
plunge with mighty roars, into the narrow streets 
below, in many instances burying beneath vast 
heaps of red hot debris, the gallant little force of 
firemen, and crushing like an egg shell the puny, 
spitting engine at its base. In their efforts to 
check the flames men resort to blowing up sur- 
rounding buildings, and the rocking detonations 
of huge charges of dynamite add to the awful 
din. 

The nmrble fronts of buildings are actually 
roasted and changed to lime, which slakes and 


46 


THE ^^SUN WAS DARKENED.’^ 

runs where the tiny stream of water, instantly 
changed to steam, comes in contact with it. Huge 
granite blocks are split by the unequal expansion 
of the heat, and the very bitumen in the paving of 
the streets smokes and glows between the vast 
piles of roaring flame. The network of wires is 
fused and broken and a perfect entanglement of 
subtle death litters the streets, as though the 
demons had set cunning snares of copper cable, 
and then charged them with a thousand volts of 
intangible death. 

In some places one may look through the win- 
dows of huge buildings and see the Titanic masses 
of machinery deserted in haste and terror, still 
rushing and hurling their steel arms and thun- 
derous pinions, silhouetted against the crimson 
heavens beyond. 

In places the streets are choked with huge drays 
and moving vans piled high with goods and forc- 
ing their way with cursing and shouting, from 
the edges of the lanes of fire. Here and there long 
lines of porters carefully watched and guarded, 
are transporting fine China and cut glass and sil- 
ver and gold jewels to the deep vaults of the safe 
deposit companies, trusting that in these subter- 
ranean tombs of cement and masonry the fire 
demon may be unable to sweep away in a moment 
their hard won wealth. 

Some realizing that the flames are beyond con- 
trol, and every moment are breaking forth in new 


THE “sun was darkened.” 


47 


places, walk slowly about sobbing, wringing their 
hands, or gaze with fierce, unseeing stare at the 
blazing ruin. This is but a replica of the scenes 
which are enacted in a thousand cities and towns 
beneath the merciless bombardment of the glow- 
ing heavens. It seems as if the God of the uni- 
verse on account of man’s wickedness permitted 
legions of evil spirits to hurl masses of meteoric 
iron heated in the deepest recesses of the bottom- 
less pit, upon the earth. It was like the fearful 
cannonading of hell’s minions before their charge 
upon the defenceless inhabitants of earth. All 
night long the awe-inspiring scenes continued. 
Men and women who had ridiculed the terrors of 
their neighbors during the darkness of the preced- 
ing day, now quaked with fear and sought shelter 
in cellars and caves, and beneath arches and pro- 
jecting rocks. Every conceivable place of shelter 
was eagerly sought. Men and women fell upon 
their faces prone upon the earth to shut from their 
sight the fearful glare occasioned by the blazing 
heavens. Gradually the bombardment slackened. 
The skies became clear, and the stars in the deep 
blue of the heavens shown as serenely as before 
the awe-inspiring scenes had occurred. 


CHAPTER II. 




I “WISE IN HIS 


OWN CONCEIT” I 



On the Sabbath morning following the disaster 
of which we have just written, the churches were 
opened as usual. It will help us to understand 
the conditions of the nominal church by giving 
special attention to one which may be taken as the 
type of them all. The pastor and some of the peo- 
ple of this special church will figure in these pages 
again and again. 

The Rev. Dr. Knowit is the pastor of this 
typical church. His congregation is large and in- 
fluential. There are many men of wealth in it, 
but on the other hand there are those who earn 
their bread in the sweat of their brows. They are 
not in the majority, but this congregation and its 
pastor have for years made it their boast that the 
poorest are not debarred from the pew. 

We must know something more of the popular 
young pastor, the Rev. Dr. Knowit. He graduated 


( 48 ) 


WISE IN HIS OWN CONCEIT. 


49 


a 


f f 


from one of the best known universities in the 
United States in the city in which his church is lo- 
cated. After his course at the theological seminary 
was finished he went abroad and studied exegesis 
and Old and New Testament theology, in a Grerman 
university of high repute. After his course was 
finished he received a unanimous call to the church 
of which we are speaking. He received the call in 
part because of his attainments, and because he 
had been such a splendid athlete all his college 
and seminary course. We say seminary course 
advisedly, because for more than a decade before 
the events of the former chapter, all that the other 
institutions of learning boasted in athletics was 
also practiced at the theological seminaries. It 
helped to bring students into the sacred walls of 
those institutions, and took away much reproach 
which had attached itself to the ministry. 

Dr. Knowit was tall and muscular. His hair 
was black as the raven’s wing. His eye was clear 
and bright. His voice was musical and his bear- 
ing in the pulpit dignified and commanding. His 
theology was not as noble as his bearing. He had 
been taught that the Bible is full of inaccuracies 
historically, that the statements with regard to 
the miracles are necessarily overdrawn, because 
they were the product of a superstitious age and 
a people who were morbid in their desires to wit- 
ness exhibitions of the supernatural. He had 

4 


50 


WISE IN HIS OWN CONCEIT. 


n 


}f 


learned that Christ himself was deceived with re- 
gard to His mission, and that if it had not been 
for the career of Paul, His most illustrious 
apostle, it was doubtful if the religion taught by 
Christ would ever have been known beyond the 
narrow confines of Judea and Galilee. Of course 
Dr. Knowit considered the conversion of Paul as 
great a fortune for humanity as the birth of J esus 
Christ. To Dr. Knowit, Jesus was the highest 
ideal of a man. Everything He said and did was 
just what could be expected from so exalted a be- 
ing. Dr. Knowit preached the doctrine of salva- 
tion through works. Every man has within him- 
self the power to save himself. That which keeps 
men from knowing and attaining the highest and 
noblest in this life is their supreme selfishness. 
Dr. Knowitt was therefore entitled to the reputa- 
tion he had for liberality, and because of his lib- 
eral views men of the world heard him gladly and 
joined his church in great numbers. He constantly 
preached that it was what a man does and not 
what he believes that saves him. He said : 

‘‘We are our own fates; our own deeds are our 
doomsmen. Man’s life was made not for men’s 
creeds, but men’s actions.” 

Yet with it all, Dr. Knowit knew that a man’s 
conduct is never better than his creed. 

At the time of which we are speaking the Sab- 
bath was no longer hemmed in its beneficent in- 
fluences by blue laws. Mr. Knowit believed with 


WISE IN HIS OWN CONCEIT. 


51 


i i 


f f 


the majority, that the Sabbath was made for man. 
He said the man who was compelled to labor all 
the week might well be excused for going on an 
excursion on the Sabbath, provided he did not give 
himself over to strong drink and every other form 
of carousal, which must necessarily leave him less 
qualified for his work after than before Sabbath. 
He could receive as much spiritual food at the 
sea shore or on the mountain as he could in the 
sanctuary. Nature existed before the church. 

On the Sabbath of which we are now speaking. 
Dr. Knowit was in his church. The Sabbath be- 
fore, he had gone down the bay with some of his 
‘‘more influentiaP’ church members, on a new 
yacht itiaking her trial trip. He had told his peo- 
ple that the church would be closed for the Sab- 
bath because he wished to worship outside of the 
sanctuary built by man^s hand, in the wider and 
more solemn church of God’s evolution. The fact 
that he had services on this Sabbath was not that 
he felt the people needed his exhortation and guid- 
ance, but bcause he had no where else to visit on 
that summer morning. He had on a new silk 
gown. It was the gift of a rich lady of his con- 
gregation. Dr. Knowit always looked well in a 
gown, but this one became him in particular. He 
had two pulpits. They were on the same level, 
one to the right and the other to the left on the 
platform. At the one he read his liturgy, from the 
other he preached. The ladies were unanimous in 


52 


WISE IN HIS OWN CONCEIT. 


ii 




declaring that he looked his best when he majes- 
tically strode from one pulpit to the other. Then 
his gown rustled slightly, but not offensively, and 
he looked the very impersonation of priestly dig- 
nity. 

Dr. Knowit had one member in his church who 
figures in the pages of this book more than any 
other woman. Her name was Miss Grace Dolent. 
Miss Grace was an orphan at the time the events 
here narrated occurred. Her father was a pious 
man and a minister of the gospel, but of an en- 
tirely different type from the Eev. Dr. Emowit. 
He believed the Word of God as it is, and in its 
entirety. It was to him a revelation of God’s will 
to fallen man, and not a book of errors and con- 
fusion which the reader must decipher and dissect 
carefully so as to get a kernel of truth here and 
there. He believed the miracles for the same rea- 
son that he believed the prophecies, because holy 
men of old wrote them as they were moved by the 
Holy Ghost. He believed the miracle of the resur- 
rection of Christ was as essential to the redemp- 
tion wrought by Christ as his birth. He believed 
with the apostle that the human heart is deceitful 
above all things, and desperately wicked. He also 
had faith that the unfulfilled prophecies of the 
Bible were inspired by the same Spirit that in- 
dicted those that were already fulfilled. He held 
that the time would come when men would realize 
that God is not slack in the fulfilling of His Word. 


WISE IN HIS OWN CONCEIT. 


53 


i i 


ff 


When the Jews began to turn their eyes toward 
Palestine, to occupy it and restore its waste 
places, Rev. Dolent saw in the movement the be- 
ginning of the fulfillment of prophecy. When 
they finally began to rebuild the temple he believed 
the hand on the dial pointed near the hour of high 
noon in the affairs of wicked men, and that it 
would be few years before God would visit the 
earth in judgment. 

When Rev. Dolent died he reconsecrated his 
daughter to Grod’s service. His last prayer in her 
behalf was that she might be a blessed witness for 
Christ among the poor and lowly, and that when 
her work was done, she might be ‘ ^ caught up in a 
moment in the twinkling of an eye, ^ ^ and thus ever 
^‘be with the Lord.^^ 

. Because Miss Dolent had been taught to look 
to Christ for her salvation, and because she real- 
ized in her own life that ^Hhe blood of Jesus 
Christ, His Son, cleanseth from all sin,’’ and be- 
cause she lived a life of separation from the sins 
and follies which the vast majority of her fellow 
church members delighted in, she was considered 
“the least bit odd,” notwithstanding her educa- 
tion and refinement. During the darkness and the 
rain of meteors she went about her duties as 
usual, because she had commended herself into 
the guardian care and keeping of Him who said 
“When thou passeth through the waters I will be 
with thee: and through the rivers they shall not 


54 


WISE IN HIS OWN CONCEIT. 


a 




overflow thee : when thou walkest through the fires 
thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame 
kindle upon thee.’’ 

I In her own heart she believed the darkness and 
meteoric shower to be a literal fulfillment of 
prophecy. She did not see her pastor until the 
Sabbath morning following the catastrophe, but 
she felt sure that the man who was always so 
ready to draw lessons from every occurrence in 
the political and civil world, would be able to draw 
very important lessons from so awful and so sub- 
lime a display of supernatural power. It was the 
doctor’s practice to weave into a prelude anything 
that was of any note in the every-day life of the 
city and the country. Grace’s surprise was shared 
by others less devout in his congregation, when he 
made no reference whatever to the event of the 
past week. 

After the services (which were little better at- 
tended than any other), she came forward. Ex- 
tending her hand, she said: ^‘I am glad you are 
alive, Doctor. I trust God has spared you for 
great service in these awful days when the Son of 
man seems to be standing on the threshold. ’ ’ 

The Doctor gave her a searching look but made 
no reply. They clasped bands and parted. 


CHAPTER HI. 




“Some Shall Depart 
From The Faith” 


One of the mercies of the night of fire and death 
described in our first chapter was what seemed to 
he a universal rain storm which followed fast 
upon the many fires kindled by the storm of iron 
hail with which the heavens had been filled for 
hours. This rain, which in many places was a per- 
fect deluge, gave the fire fighters encouragement, 
and above all, great advantage over the conflagra- 
tion. It must also be remembered that whilst 
these awful fires raged in many cities and villages, 
in some cases utterly destroying whole sections, 
there were many places where no meteors touched 
the earth, and where there were no ill effects from 
the awful display. 

Man is the child of hope. In the most serious 
calamities he concludes that matters are at their 
worst, and consequently when these calamities 
seem to have expended their strength he lays hold 
( 55 ) 


56 ^^SOME SHALL DEPART FROM THE FAITH/^ 

on life anew and is enthused with all its aspira- 
tions. Thus it was that after a few days the dark- 
ness and the tire were almost forgotten, and men 
laid fresh hold upon their duties, and entered upon 
their pleasures with new vim. 

Before we can pursue our narrative any far- 
ther, it will be necessary to take a view of the 
state of society at the time in which these events 
occurred. At the opening of the Twentieth Cen- 
tury there were those who asserted that society 
was entering upon a new era. Whether this era 
was to prove the most glorious which humanity 
had ever experienced, many doubted. Some of 
the most sanguine were not without doubts as to 
whether all the forces which distinguished the 
Twentieth Century from every other, might not 
plunge humanity into new throes. No one could 
close his eyes to the presence of mighty forces for 
evil which had been generated in the Nineteenth 
Century and which were now reaching the age of 
their greatest power. 

It became evident to some that the repealing of 
the Sunday laws, the observance of which had con- 
tributed so much to the integrity and advance- 
ment of society in the Nineteenth Century, must 
bring disaster to the people of the Twentieth Cen- 
tury. Others who had worked for the repeal of 
these same laws, and who had argued that society 
could no longer be bound in the swaddling clothes 
of restrictions which had marked the birth of 


‘‘some shall depakt fkom the faith. 57 

human life and human development, apprehended 
no serious consequence from the repeal of “blue 
laws.’^ They held that it was incongruous with 
the enlarged view of human possibilities and ca- 
pabilities to keep the sackcloth of old superstitions 
on this new life. 

With the repeal of Sabbath laws came the dis- 
regard for the sanctity of the day not only, but of 
God^s house also. The attendance upon the ser- 
vices in the sanctuary diminished more and more. 
The twin grip of greed and of pleasure became so 
firmly fixed upon the life and energies of the la- 
borer that it drove him to hate the church quite as 
much as he hated the capitalist. He blamed the 
church for that for which she was not entirely re- 
sponsible, except in so far as she did not assert 
herself when society was being despoiled from her 
God given heritages. 

It must be remembered also that the reason 
men and women turned their backs on the church 
was not wholly owing to the repealing of Sabbath 
laws, and the turning of the holy day into a holi- 
day. The pulpit began to give forth uncertain 
sounds. Ministers of the faith became the chief 
doubters of the times. Almost everyone of them 
ascribed to himself the right to reject or to receive 
some of the chief doctrines of the Word. The 
number who preached salvation through the ex- 
ample of Christ and not through the death of 
Christ was constantly on the increase. In fact 


58 ^‘SOME SHALL DEPART FROM THE FAITH. ’ ^ 

many of them doubted whether man needed a Sav- 
iour at all. They boldly asserted that the fall of 
man so called, was a fall upward and not down- 
ward, if there ever was a fall at all. 

With the loss of faith, formality constantly in- 
creased. Men turned themselves into priests, 
wearing the garb very much like that worn by Old 
Testament priests, and officiated before altars of 
their own building. They thus made of none effect 
the finished work of Christ and his ‘‘unchange- 
able priesthood. Wherefore he is able to save to 
the uttermost them that come to God by him see- 
ing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.’^ 
In their preaching they held before their congre- 
gation a human Christ stripped of his divinity, or 
rather, who was no more divine than any other 
man can be, a suffering Christ whose agony was no 
more to the world than the suffering of any other 
martyr. 

As men turned away from the Church because 
they did not find therein what they wished and 
what Christ meant that they should find, many of 
the ministry instead of turning to the great Head 
of the Church and imploring Him for the return 
of the Spirit they had grieved, began to supply a 
man-made power for the power of God unto salva- 
tion of souls. Institutional churches, clubs and 
guilds in themselves not without merit, became a 
hindrance rather than a help, because it was 
thought possible that these could take the place of 
the Holy Ghost. 


SOME SHALL DEPART FROM THE FAITH. 


59 


i i 


> y 


Another lack of the Church which had helped 
to sap her of her God-given power, was the substi- 
tution of written prayers. A vast majority of pas- 
tors preferred to read prayers or chant them with 
their congregations rather than to present the 
daily needs and shortcomings of their people in 
such language as their desires and impulses might 
suggest. That the prayers of holy men of old are 
good forms into which to cast the desires of the 
hearts of the people of all ages, no one will deny ; 
but that these same prayers repeated as a whole 
or in part, and repeated many times over in the 
same service, do not become ‘‘vain repetitions,^^ 
no one can demonstrate. So too the mid-week ser- 
vice was shorn of its power, because it was made 
to consist in a lecture and a liturgical service 
rather than in an exhortation to holy life and in 
prayers of many of those in attendance for the 
Spirit ^s power and presence at every service of 
the Church, and in the life and experience of every 
believer. 

As a matter of course, along with Christless 
sermons and prayerless “prayer meetings,’’ was 
seen the lack of power to save men from their 
sins, and so came empty churches and godless peo- 
ple. Dissertations on the great questions of the 
day could hold the people to the church no more 
than sensational themes or learned lectures on 
political and scientific subjects. Social standing 
rather than a determination to live a godly life 


'60 ^‘SOME SHALL DEPART FROM THE FAITH/^ 

became tbe requirement to cburcb membership. 
As long as the doors of society remained open to 
anyone, so long the Church beckoned; as soon as 
the doors of society closed against anyone, so soon 
the Church turned away in despair. She changed 
her mission from seeking to save that which was 
lost into seeking to profit from those whom she 
gained. As society became more heartless and de- 
praved, the difference between the church and the 
world was in no way perceptible except that some 
still continued to pay pew rents. Men and women in 
the church could do all that those without did and 
not ‘‘lose their religion, simply because they had 
none to lose. Thus it was that the great churches 
in their stately ritualism, popularity and spiritual 
emptiness possessed few of the characteristics of 
the persecuted and maligned yet godly, conse- 
crated church, rich in spiritual power and favor 
with Christ. Yet with it all the Church of those 
days boasted that she was rich and increased in 
goods and had need of nothing. That all the 
churches were alike we wish neither to assert nor 
to intimate. There was a great company of true 
believers, in comparison with the great horde who 
had a name yet were dead, comparatively small, 
in reality a great company who waited for their 
Lord. There were watchmen on the walls of Zion 
who discerned the signs of the times and whose 
preaching gave forth no uncertain sound both to 
comfort and to warn. As the night of sin and 


‘^SOME SHALL DEPART FROM THE FAITH. 61 

spiritual decadence settled down their faith was 
tried it is true, but triumphant withal. These 
were not in repute with their fellows in the Church 
or in the world, but this mattered little to them 
so long as they were in favor with their Master. 
They were hated just as cordially as their breth- 
ren of the first centuries, but they were not per- 
secuted unto death as were their brethren. In 
heathen lands many died because of their faith, 
so that it was said by those who carefully esti- 
mated, that there were fully as many Christian 
martyrs in the nineteenth century as there were 
at any time in the history of the Church. 

The clergy and even their enemies apologized 
for the empty churches and the lack of spiritual 
power, by saying that religion and piety were 
manifest in enlarged charities. The great deeds 
of men were their prayer to their God. With all 
this boasting of erJarged liberality, the amounts 
given for charity in comparison with the amounts 
wasted by the rich were shamefully small, the ef- 
forts made in behalf of the downtrodden and op- 
pressed by the great and powerful were scarcely 
to be compared with the efforts for self-aggran- 
dizement. 

The home life in consequence of the lack of 
moral and spiritual power lost its sanctity and 
hallowed influence. The ruin of the family altar 
brought about the destruction of family affection 
and family virtue. Marriages were dissolved as 


62 ^^SOME SHALL DEPAKT FKOM THE FAITH.’’ 

easily as they were contracted. Children of both 
sexes were taught to believe that the highest end in 
life is the amassing of wealth, the cultivation of 
the aesthetic faculty and the enjoyment of the 
senses. In the twentieth century men made the 
same mistake that had been made in other ages ; 
namely that the perfecting of and the triumphs in 
literature, art and science, poetry and philosophy, 
can take the place of real piety and devotion to- 
ward God and the interests of fellow-man. They 
believed that the culture of the head can make up 
for the lack of heart culture. They confounded 
progress in civilization, and polish of manners, 
superficial refinement with the ‘‘new birth” with- 
out which no man can enter the kingdom of 
heaven. They pointed to the abolition of slavery, 
the cessation of the wholesale slaughter of men 
and women in the arena, the right of trial by jury, 
and all the other achievements of self-government 
and civil liberty to prove that the world was con- 
stantly growing better and men everywhere were 
nearing the kingdom of heaven. They failed to 
see that all these were the fruits of holiness — the 
holiness of men and women who inaugurated laws 
and right principles and lived by them — and not 
the sources of holiness. They forgot that men 
have often eaten most delicious fruits after the 
tree which bore them was cut down and destroyed 
with axes sharpened and wielded by their own 
hands. They forgot too^ that the trees thus de- 


^^SOME SHALL DEPART FROM THE FAITH.’ ^ 63 

stroyed could never again be made alive and fruit- 
ful. 

Whilst the fact that slavery was abolished was 
everywhere put forth as an evidence that the 
world was better than formerly, it remained an 
indisputable fact that there was a species of slav- 
ery just as galling and just as real as any that ex- 
isted when men sold their fellows at auction. 

Whilst men boasted that the churches were no 
longer attended as formerly, simply because the 
Church was no longer needed to make men better 
as had been the case so long, it remained true still, 
that Jesus had instituted the Church for the sal- 
vation of men to the end of the age, and that He 
had not in the least changed the plan of salvation, 
or so much as intimated a change. It remained 
true also that these same boasters of their integ- 
rity and charity actually enriched themselves by 
withholding the just wages of those who toiled to 
make them rich. Many were compelled to toil in 
poverty, deprived of the light of the sun and nour- 
ishing food, simply because their meager wages 
did not enable them to pay the additional price 
demanded by those already rich so as to make 
themselves more wealthy and powerful. Thus 
the world gradually ripened in sin for the judg- 
ments which God permitted to come upon it. The 
most remarkable fact about the whole matter is 
that whilst the Bible foretold it all, so few were 
willing to recognize the description of the age in 


64 ^‘SOME SHALL DEPAET FROM THE FAITH.’’ 

which they were living, repent of their evil ways, 
and thus save themselves by the mercies of God, 
from the just wages of their sins. If this is sur- 
prising, it is still more wonderful that the ma- 
jority of the leaders in the Church should have 
deplored in one breath the inditference of the peo- 
ple toward the means of grace, and in the other 
extolled the progress of the Church in their time 
over that which she had made in former ages. Un- 
like those stricken blind they forgot the treasure 
of their lost eyesight, and thought themselves fill- 
ed with light when they were really groping in 
the dark. 


CHAPTER IV. 


“Every Mountain and Island Were 
Moved Out Of Their Place” 


The Rev. Dr. Knowit was sitting in his study 
one afternoon following the conversation he had 
had with Grace Dolent in the church. To the 
casual observer he would have seemed fully at 
ease. He seemed to be staring into vacancy wait- 
ing for some thought or impulse ; but the truth of 
the matter is, he was thinking of Grace Dolent ’s 
words: ‘‘What a literal fulfillment of the words, 
‘The sun became black as the sackcloth of hair, 
and the moon became as blood and the stars of 
heaven fell to the earth.’ ” He said to himself, 
“When I think of the appearance of the sun and 
the moon, and the display of meteors, at first bril- 
liant and interesting, then sublime and awe-in- 
spiring, and then terrifying, it was easy to make 
one believe that the end of the world is at hand. ’ ’ 
Just then he put forth his hand and took his Bible 
from one of the top shelves of his book-case. He 
( 65 ) 


5 


66 


MOUNTAINS AND ISLANDS MOVED. 


opened it and read the very words Grace Dolent 
had quoted. He closed it again, and said aloud, 
‘ ‘ but there was no earthquake. ’ ^ Next he took one 
of the latest commentaries from its shelf and read 
how this same passage was explained in the light 
of modern thought. The writer felt sure that the 
passage was a symbolical representation of the 
triumphs of Christianity during the age of Con- 
stantine, seventeen hundred years before. To Dr. 
Knowit who had been taught to read meanings 
into the Scriptures which the Holy Spirit never 
intended, this seemed a satisfactory interpreta- 
tion. 

And yet if the words were really literal, and 
what the whole world had just witnessed were 
really the beginning of those awful events which 
were spoken of in the chapters following — ^but 
there was no earthquake, and the earthquake was 
represented as following immediately upon the 
meteoric shower. At the same time he was com- 
pelled to acknowledge that the air was becoming 
more oppressive every day ever since the meteoric 
shower. The air seemed as stagnant as a mid-sum- 
mer sea in the tropics before a tornado. Only 
yesterday he met an old naval officer whose son 
had been a classmate with him at college. The of- 
ficer had sailed almost everywhere, and he had 
been on land and sea during earthquakes. He had 
felt the throes of the earth which resulted in the 
birth of new islands and the upheaval of new vol- 


MOUNTAINS AND ISLANDS MOVED. 


67 


canoes. This old man said in a remark about the 
weather, that it was ^‘regular earthquake weath- 
er. 

Then Dr. Knowit looked into vacancy once 
more. After a little while he suddenly arose, put 
on his hat and left the room. He went straight to 
the subway, and in less than half an hour he 
walked into a large tidy room where a dozen or 
more women were engaged in plain sewing. Grace 
Dolent arose when she saw him come in, and of- 
fered him a chair; but he told her he would like to 
see her in her office for a moment or two. The 
place where he was bore the name of Talitha Cumi 
(‘^Damsel arise. For many years, with a few 
Christian women at its head, this institution had 
done much to help fallen women to a better life. 
For several years already, Grace Dolent was giv- 
ing all her time to this mission. Many were the 
trophies she had won for her Master. At the same 
time, no one knew better than she the fearful 
wickedness of the great city. What she did not 
witness with her own eyes, those whom she had 
been instrumental in rescuing, told her. 

When they arrived in the office Dr. Knowit said, 
‘‘Miss Grace, how do you like this weather T’ 
Without waiting for a reply, he continued, “An 
old friend of mine told me yesterday, that it is 
regular earthquake weather.’^ 

She replied, “I have no doubt but that the re- 
mainder of the passage in Rev. vi:13-14 will 


68 


MOUNTAINS AND ISLANDS MOVED. 


shortly be fulfilled. It may not be to-day or to- 
morrow, but I believe the Word. Have you thought 
over the wonderful occurrences of the past few 
days, in the light of sacred scripture. Dr. Know- 
itr» 

His only reply was, “Grace, you and your peo- 
ple around this place live in constant apprehen- 
sion. You get so little good out of your life. You 
certainly deserve something better hereafter.’^ 

“Pray do not pity us. We are happy in His 
service, watching and waiting. But you said you 
wished to see me privately. What can I do for 
youT’ 

“To tell you the truth. Miss Grace, I feel un- 
comfortable. You have so much faith in the 
Bible and seem to get so much comfort out of it, 
that I envy you. Tell me, whether you really be- 
lieve that the darkness and the meteors are spoken 
of in Revelation ? I cannot believe that the occur- 
rences of last week were anything which God 
cared to foreknow or to control. ’ ’ 

“Dr. Knowit, you shock me. You preach so 
much about the fatherhood of God, and yet you 
believe that God is not master of His own crea- 
tion.’’ 

I do not know how long this conversation might 
have continued, had it not been for a call for Miss 
Grace from some poor wretch who had tottered to 
the doors of Talitha Cumi. Grace excused her- 
self and Dr. Knowit took his gold-headed cane and 
gloves and started for the subway. 


MOUNTAINS AND ISLANDS MOVED. 


69 


When he arrived at the station, he was told 
that the cars were not running. The wires flashed 
and scintillated along their full length as far as 
he could see in the subway. With a strange look 
on his face he went up the stairs and took a sur- 
face car, but the insulation seemed imperfect. As 
soon as the trolley touched the wire the passen- 
gers felt electric shocks. Having rushed from the 
car he beckoned to a cab man whom he engaged 
to convey him to his home. In an hour and a half 
he reached his study. He heard no sounds, but he 
and all whom he met in the house, together with 
the cab man whom he left at the door, somehow 
felt that something awful was about to occur. 
Everything seemed to change color. He looked 
from his window into the park, and nature looked 
different from what it was wont. He felt sub- 
dued and overwhelmed by some invisible power 
beyond his control or understanding. Then there 
came a terrible sound as of the breaking of glass 
out on the street, then a grating and grumbling 
deep beneath the surface of the earth. He felt 
the house roll and shake as a ship at sea tosses 
when caught in the mighty arms of a storm. Dr. 
Knowit was not a man to cry out or fall into need- 
less fears, but he became deadly sick and swooned 
away. How long he lay he did not know, but when 
he came to himself he saw in the wall of the room 
a crack through which the day light shone. All 
was quiet. He lay for some moments in the effort 


70 


MOUNTAINS AND ISLANDS MOVED. 


to collect his senses and realize where he was and 
what had happened. Then he arose and staggered 
across the floor to the door, but he could not open 
it. The frame in which it was set was twisted out 
of shape. Gaining a little more strength he tried 
to wrench it from its fastenings. Not succeeding 
he kicked through a panel and then another. His 
athletic training stood by him at the expense of 
his prudence. He demolished the door and went 
down the stairs. The front door stood open. Across 
the street, where a huge block had stood, there 
now was a skeleton frame of steel girders and 
joists, whilst the street was entirely filled with 
debris to the height of many feet. This huge build- 
ing seemed to be the only one that had fallen so 
far as he could see. The street was quiet. He 
looked far down the street and saw men and 
horses prone upon the earth as if they had sud- 
denly been turned to stone. But ere long the same 
mysterious power which had called him to himself 
upon the floor of his study also seemed to seize 
upon the forms before him. They rose in what 
seemed a wild inextricable mass. Instead of cries 
for mercy he heard horrid oaths and deadful im- 
precations. 

It is not within the scope of this volume to 
portray at length the scenes which met Dr. Know- 
it^s eyes as he went out into the stricken city. 
Many buildings were wrecked to such an extent 
that they had to be taken down afterwards. A few 


MOUNTAINS AND ISLANDS MOVED. 


71 


were entirely demolished. The loss of life was 
comparatwely slight. Out of a population of three 
millions and a half in the city proper, not more 
than a thousand were killed or wounded. 

There was one characteristic of this earthquake 
which distinguished it from every other in his- 
tory. This was its universality. It was many 
months before the centers of civilization and com- 
merce knew the whole effect, and wide spread dev- 
astation. There was not an island of the sea or 
a vessel afloat on the lakes or the ocean, that had 
not felt the effect of that earthquake. Whole towns 
had been wiped out, thousands of lives were lost, 
and many millions of dollars worth of property 
destroyed. So sad a misfortune at other times, 
had it occurred, would have touched the simplest 
and deepest feeliugs of our common humanity; 
but now it failed to do so whether because of the 
universality of the disaster or whether the fires of 
human sympathy were low because of the in- 
creased selfishness, is not within my province to 
decide. There were no modern or ancient parallels 
to this catastrophe, and so perhaps beca.. n there 
was death in every household throughout 
length and breadth of many localities as there was 
in the land of ancient Egypt when the death angel 
slew the first-born, each family mourned by itself, 
alone, for its dead. There were no long funeral 
trains bearing many coffins in one somber proces- 
sion. On the other hand there seemed a disposi- 
tion to dispose of the dead as quickly as possible. 


72 


MOUNTAINS AND ISLANDS MOVED. 


Funeral services according to Christian burial, 
were few. It seemed as if the whole world was 
making a special effort to forget the calamity, as 
if in anticipation of greater ones to follow. What 
was so remarkable was the fact that the services 
in the churches on the following Sabbath were 
meagerly attended. It is true, there were many 
hearts too sad to venture out of their homes. 
There was too much confusion on the streets to 
make going forth safe or desirable. The hum of 
busy work was in full swing on the Sabbath just 
two days after the earthquake. There was plenty 
of reason for work on the Sabbath, but there was 
still more reason for universal fasting, humilia- 
tion and prayer. If many thought of this, few put 
it into practice. We remarked that very few pas- 
tors referred to the dark day and the night of fire 
a week before, but it was different now when the 
earth had been shaken from center to circumfer- 
ence. Every pastor who was able to appear be- 
fore his people, dwelt upon the disaster. Many 
of them gave the history of earthquakes. They 
tried to show that these disturbances go in periods 
and are more violent at one time than at any 
other. They said there was no reason to fear a 
reoccurrence of so wide-spread a calamity. They 
pointed out the lessons to be learned in the con- 
struction of houses, the importance of construct- 
ing less lofty buildings and of retaining self-pos- 
session at the first warning, and of at once going 
to a place of safety. 



“'FHE GREAT CALAMITY.” — “Except Those Days Had Been Short- 
ened, No Elesh Would Have Been Saved.” This 
Picture Shows the Devii/s EYkst Visit 
For His Intended Bride— His 
Impenitent World. — P a"e 72. 



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MOUNTAINS AND ISLANDS MOVED. 


73 


This came from the lips of men who should have 
interpreted the judgments of God. Some of these 
men two days before, were loud in their prayers 
for mercy. During those awful seconds when rocks 
were rent and hurled by giant forces miles from 
their original resting places, and buildings crumb- 
led like mole hills, these savants forgot their 
philosophy and cried to heaven for mercy. Now 
that the sun once more shone and the earth seemed 
firm as of yore, even the religious teachers forgot 
their fears and their cries of anguish. Now they 
tried to explain all upon philosophic principles, 
and intimated that neither God nor his anger had 
anything to do with any of the calamities they 
had witnessed. So they repented not of their sins. 

We have said nothing of the experiences of 
Grace Dolent and her little colony of women. It 
would be unnatural to be perfectly calm in so sud- 
den and unexpected calamity. But it was like 
Grace, in a moment to recover her self-possession 
and in a clear voice she began the ninety-first 
Psalm, ‘ ^ He that dwelleth in the secret place of the 
most High shall abide under the shadow of the Al- 
mighty. This restored confidence in the help 
and presence of Him whose eye never sleepeth, 
and who is always able to care for His own. 

On the following Sabbath in her Bible reading 
in the home, she pointed out that such convulsions 
are prophesied in connection with the judgment, 
and the approach and consummation of the end of 


74 


MOUNTAINS AND ISLANDS MOVED. 


the age. She read from the twenty-fourth chapter 
of Matthew ^s gospel, and showed how Jesus told 
his disciples how famines and pestilence and 
earthquakes are more and more to cKaracterize 
the coming of the end. Then she went to the Old 
Testament and read from Haggai, ‘^Thus saith 
the Lord of Hosts, yet once it is a little while, and 
I will shake the heavens, and the earth and the 
sea, and the dry land (2 :6). As those servants of 
God looked into each others faces that afternoon, 
they felt sure of God^s promises, and sure of each 
other. They had regrets for their sins and wasted 
years, but they realized that ‘‘the blood of Jesus 
Christ His Son cleanseth from all sin.’’ 


CHAPTEE V. 




«CCCSC«««!Se««ee«> 

THE LOVE OF MONEY 


I IS A ROOT OF EVIL 


*% 

0 


About two months after the earthquake when 
men and women had taken up the old life again 
and in part forgotten the terrors of the events 
described, about two hundred capitalists in the 
United States received a circular letter inviting 
them to a convention. The convention was not to 
be announced in the papers, and only those who 
had received the written invitation were expected 
to be there. Those who were asked to come were 
also respectfully requested to reply expressing 
their willingness to come. It was intimated in the 
circular letter that the meeting would be of finan- 
cial importance to every one and revolutionize 
trade throughout the world. The circular letter 
had names of note attached, and of the two hun- 
dred invitations sent out the senders received a 
favorable reply from nearly all. In due time the 
convention assembled. We can get an idea of its 
import by listening to the chairman of the com- 
mittee which sent the invitations. 

( 75 ) 


76 


LOVE OF MONEY A ROOT OF EVIL. 


He said : — ‘ ^ Gentlemen, you have been called to- 
gether because we know of your importance in the 
world of commerce, and because we know of your 
patriotism. We believe a closer union of the Cap- 
ital of this country and of the world in fact, will 
be of universal benefit. We have already seen the 
advantages which have accrued to the capitalist 
by the many combinations of capital. The history 
of trade in this and other lands is the history of 
what is vulgarly known as Trusts. 

Let me briefiy call your attention to what has 
been accomplished by the Trusts in different ave- 
nues of trade. We of the Oil Trust have, and can 
now put up the price of oil to any figure we please. 
Years ago when we spent fifty millions of dollars 
in perfecting a net work of pipe lines over the 
eastern part of this great country, we were never- 
theless able to declare a dividend of ninety-six 
million dollars within two years. That was an 
enormous profit on our capital stock, which 
amounted to only one hundred million dollars. 
You do not ask how this was possible. You know 
it was because we controlled the supply of oil in 
the United States. 

When the great Anthracite coal strike was on in 
1902-3, when all the people along the entire Atlan- 
tic seaboard faced a fuel famine in the heart of 
winter, we simply added four cents to the price of 
oil per gallon, and by so doing we were enabled to 
declare the greatest dividend in our history. Some 


LOVE OF MONEY A EOOT OP EVIL. 


77 


of the ^ submerged^ may have had a little less for 
beer and tobacco, but no one really suffered, least 
of all did we suffer who drew the handsome divi- 
dends. Some of the men of wealth to-day date 
their start in accummulating capital to those days 
of the coal strike. 

But this accummulation of capital has confer- 
red immense advantage upon us who control the 
oil industry of this country. We were in a posi- 
tion years ago already, to dictate terms to almost 
every line of business. We can control our bank- 
ing business, and the railroads throughout the 
country. If we wish we can see to it that not a 
bushel of grain is carried over the railroads ex- 
cept at the figure we dictate. It would not be 
impossible for us to regulate the output of coal. 
We can, if we wish, dictate the price of bread and 
meat, of salt and sugar. All we need to do is to 
demonstrate to these industries that it is to their 
advantage to join us, to confer with us in regulat- 
ing prices, in employing and discharging labor. 

‘^It may be said that the general public will re- 
bel. Who is the public! We, gentlemen, are the 
public. We create our own sentiment. Those who 
oppose us dare no more resort to law than to vio- 
lence. Both the laws of the state and the army of 
the commonwealth must protect us. If need be 
we can enact any laws we desire. If the legisla- 
tors in power will not enact the laws we desire we 
need only wait to see what they will do, and then 


78 


LOVE OF MONEY A ROOT OF EVIL. 


we can elect the legislators we need, men who will 
protect our interests. 

^‘Furthermore, we will give the people the best 
they can procure for their mouey. Many who are 
not of us speak of us as a blessing to the rich and 
the poor alike, because of the quality of the goods 
we offer, and that in many cases, for less money 
than those same goods could be procured before 
we existed. 

“We can raise the prices for our goods at our 
pleasure. In the past, when objections haVe been 
raised, these objections have been feeble as those 
who raised them. A cent or two per pound for a 
commodity is so little that even the poorest will 
pay without objecting, especially so when they 
know that their objection will avail them nothing. 

“We can drive out our competitors with a 
golden wand. Many become sore when they are 
kicked, but very tender when they are bought. 
Years ago the National Biscuit Company drove 
all the cracker bakers out of business, not with the 
lash, but with a golden wand. They simply bought 
out the entire promiscuous trade. In some cases 
they paid handsomely, but the profits which ac- 
crued because the Company controlled the trade 
soon reimbursed them, and reimbursed them 
handsomely. I need not tell you, gentlemen, that 
within the last half century the Trusts have had 
their hand on the heart of every business in this 
land. They have brought millions into the coffers 


LOVE OF MONEY A BOOT OF EVIL. 


79 


of those who knew how to think, plan, execute. It 
is true, here and there a trust has failed, but in 
every instance it has been the fault of the trust, 
and not of the general public. 

‘^But why should I spend so much time in the 
rehearsal of facts with which you are as familiar 
as I am. I hold in my hand a list of the names of 
what the general public is pleased to call the 
money barons, a title not really obnoxious to us. 
They are the names of the men at the head of the 
marts of trade in both the Old and the New 
World. The names of many of you here present 
are on this list. You know you have agreed to 
organize a Trust of the Trusts. This, in brief 
will be a congress of far-sighted capitalists who 
will further their own interests and the interests 
of their colleagues. They will decide what to buy, 
when to buy and when to sell, but more than this, 
they will decide to whom to sell. In brief they will 
control the marts of trade. Every trust in the 
past has had its secrets, but this Trust of the 
Trusts will be a law unto itself. ’ ’ 

This and much more the speaker said. There 
were a few of those assembled who were not so 
sanguine as to the possibilities of the proposed 
combine. The business was so gigantic that it 
was enough to make the stoutest hearts quail. To 
choose exclusively who was to buy the goods these 
gentlemen would offer, and actually prevent the 
consumption of goods by persons whom they did 


80 


LOVE OF MONEY A ROOT OF EVIL. 


not wish to buy was to make a new aristocracy the 
like of which the world had never heard. 

Finally plans were formulated for the proposed 
union, committees appointed, and the meeting ad- 
journed. When the several committees would be 
through with their work, the result was to be sent 
to each member of the proposed union to receive 
his signature to the By-Laws and Constitution. 

Inasmuch as all this was secret we know little 
of the particulars, but so much became evident: 
The new Trust would insist that every one who 
applied for the purchase of any goods sold by 
these men must submit to the receiving of a mark 
in the forehead. The consumer of the goods was 
to receive the same mark. In this way no one 
could buy or sell without the mark, for the Trust 
of the Trusts virtually controlled every market- 
able commodity, everything essential to the sus- 
tenance and the comfort of life. He who was un- 
willing to receive the mark might as well have 
made up his mind to die at the same time, inas- 
much as he could neither buy or sell without the 
mark. 

This was a direct stroke at the liberties of the 
people, because the Trust had not only arrogated 
to itself the right to say what a man should eat 
and drink and wear, but it was an easy matter to 
decide what a man should say, what political cause 
he should espouse, what church, if any, he should 
attend. 


LOVE OF MONEY A ROOT OF EVIL. 


81 


When some of the members objected to the 
mark their objection was overruled on the ground 
that in this way only supreme control could be ob- 
tained, and a system inaugurated more powerful 
and more sweeping in its control than anything 
the world had ever known or ever even thought of. 
Just as soon as the Trust made itself master of 
everything manufactured or grown, and insisted 
that it would not sell to any who were unwilling to 
receive the mark, the marking itself would be sub- 
mitted to without much protest. We may or may 
not see in the future pages of this work whether 
the plan was carried out. 

Those who sat in session that day listening to 
their speaker as he told them how easy it was to 
raise the price of a commodity and thus enrich 
themselves, did not know what it cost the very 
people who paid the few extra cents without mur- 
muring. They did not know that during that same 
coal strike the Salvation Army went about beg- 
ging the money so that they could moisten asbes- 
tos bricks with coal oil and give them to the ex- 
tremely poor so that they might keep from freez- 
ing. Neither did they know, or at least care to 
know that there were young eyes which were 
hopelessly ruined during that same strike strain- 
ing to see the stitches their tired fingers made in 
the twilight, and all because they could not afford 
to pay for sufiScient oil to keep their candles bum- 
6 


82 


LOVE OF MONEY A ROOT OF EVIL. 


ing, because oil cost four cents, only four cents, 
more per gallon than it did before. 

They did not know nor did they care that some 
of those toilers for the sweat-shops were com- 
pelled to go without the scanty allowance of meat, 
so that they might meet the extra expense for light 
and fuel. If they had known or cared to have 
known how hard it is for those same poor people 
who paid the extra four cents per gallon for oil, 
to get about, that there are ‘‘thousands on the 
lower East Side of New York who have never been 
north of Fourteenth street. Well, if they had 
known, I suppose they would have charged the ex- 
tra four cents all the same. ‘ ‘ There are thousands 
of children in New York who have never seen Cen- 
tral Park. How can they get there? It is eight 
miles to walk and they have no money for car 
fare.’’ They are so weak and sickly that they 
could not walk one-third of the distance, and they 
are so weak because their parents cannot earn 
enough money to buy them nourishing food. “It 
is not because they must pay this tribute to the 
Trusts, but it is because they are drunken vaga- 
bonds,” do you say? We admit this is true of very 
many of those people who must patronize the 
trusts, and that the worst trust that they patronize 
is the liquor traffic, but that does not make all else 
we have said untrue. The fact that the liquor is al- 
lowed to exist in these days of boasted enlighten- 
ment and benevolence is in itself the best comment 
on the veracity of the boast* 


CHAPTER VI. 





1 

“FAMILIAR SPIRITS” 

1 

1 


1 


One of the cults which characterized the age of 
which we are speaking, was that of spiritism, or 
spiritualism as it was popularly called. Men and 
women of all classes supposed themselves in com- 
munication with their ancestors in the spirit 
world. In addition to their supposed messages 
from their own ancestors they believed that every 
now and then they received extended communica- 
tions from exalted spirits whom they revered for 
the lofty sentiments they uttered, and the impor- 
tant communications they gave with regard to 
eternal things. 

One doctrine of this cult is in entire har- 
mony with every other of the age, namely that a 
man must be his own saviour. Men awake in the 
next life exactly in the same state as they become 
unconscious in this life. Immediately after death 
men enter upon a stage of development which is 
slow but as certain as the laws of spirit life. Some 
develop much slower than others simply because 
they begin lower down in the scale of develop- 
( 83 ) 


84 


FAMILIAR SPIRITS 


ment. If their earth life was sensuous and ex- 
ceedingly carnal they are less susceptible to the 
higher spirit influences, but this can only hinder 
them for a time. Ages to come will find them just 
as pure as those who on earth lived the most 
spiritual lives. 

Very much speculation exists as to who the so- 
called spirits are that communicate through me- 
diums, that is, talk by taking possession of the 
bodies of living beings and using their organs of 
speech. On the one hand, there have been those 
who deny that there are any spiritual beings in 
communication through so-called mediums. That 
the contrary is true seems a well established fact. 
Let us briefly show why we believe this. The 
heathen philosophers and poets believed in such 
communications. They believed them to be the 
spirits of mortals when separated from their 
earthly bodies. 

Others, such as Zoroaster, Thales, Pythagoras 
and Plato, and in fact the heathen authors gener- 
ally, viewed them as spiritual beings, interme- 
diate between supreme Deity and mortals : Lucian 
makes his dialogist ask: “"V^at is man? Answer: 
A mortal god. And what is a god? Answer: An 
immortal man.’^ 

Many of the Church fathers regarded them as 
the souls of the unsanctified. The Apostle Paul 
(I Cor. 10:20, 21) assures us that the sacrifices 
which the Gentiles made were made not to gods 


FAMILIAR SPIRITS 


85 


but to demons, and that their sacred feasts were 
in honor of demons. We are not so ready to ad- 
mit that these demons are the souls of men of 
Adam’s race. If they are disembodied spirits 
there is reason to believe that they belonged to a 
class of mortals distinct from us. The moment 
we admit that they belong to Adam’s race we ad- 
mit that those of our own race have the power to 
harass and deceive mortals in the flesh. If evil 
spirits can come back to this earth-life then good 
ones can come back also. Our dearest departed 
therefore have changed their faith. They no 
longer believe the essentials of the sacred Scrip- 
ture. They no longer believe in the vicarious suf- 
ferings of Christ, nor do they believe in separa- 
tion between good and bad in the life to come. 

When Jesus Christ was on the earth he was 
constantly annoyed by these spirits, but in every 
case he was their master. They were compelled 
to obey him. He spoke of them as demons. He 
never once mentioned the presence of the pious 
dead. He did speak of the presence and help of 
angels. We therefore conclude that the spirits 
who come to this world to open communication 
with mortals, are fallen spirits. That they are 
spirits who once were in the flesh is possible, but 
that they are the spirits who belong to Adam’s 
race, is not at all probable. 

The Bible always deprecated communion with 
these familiar spirits. Special statutes were given 
against the practice, in the law of Moses. Such 


86 


FAMILIAR SPIRITS 


communications were looked upon as great un- 
faithfulness and sin against God. Whilst Saul 
was in his better days he forbade communication 
I with the spirit world. The penalty he affixed was 
death. Afterwards he disobeyed Ms own law and 
sought communication with Samuel through the 
witch of Endor. We know what was the result. 

Let us sum up the whole matter by stating that 
we believe that it is possible to open communica- 
tion with the spirit world; that such communica- 
tion is now taking place in an ever-increasing 
number of instances. We believe also that in not 
a single instance is there communion with a pure 
spirit. We believe that every one of them belongs 
to the kingdom of the devil. Furthermore we be- 
lieve that no one who is in communion either di- 
rectly or through a medium is made better, but in 
every instance is made to lose faith in the Word 
of God and in Christ as the Saviour of the world. 

We know that these spirits have made very 
many promises to do great things for mortals in 
the flesh. For instance : they have promised to re- 
store the lost arts; to give a true history of the 
past, promising to tell us about the lost continent, 
Atlantis, and what not? Have they ever made 
good any one of these promises ? Have they ever 
helped the student in his meditation, the scientist 
in his research, the Christian in his devotion? 
There is but one answer to all these questions. It 
is an emphatic no. Their saying that poets and 


FAMILIAR SPIRITS 


87 


philosophers are inspired by them, that the most 
beautiful thought the world receives to-day it re- 
ceives by their inspiration, does not in the least 
prove their assertions true. 

At the time of which we are writing, spirit- 
ism claimed its adherents by the thousands, in all 
lands and among all classes. It was received by 
many as a distinct and only true religion. Of 
those who continued to go to church, nearly all 
believed its virtues. Its oracles were loud in pro- 
claiming their belief that all governments would 
be enlisted in its favor. Men did not take warn- 
ing from God^s Word which distinctly said two 
thousand years before, that such would be the 
case, but at the same time it also spoke of the re- 
sults which would be sure to follow. ‘‘The spirit 
speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some 
shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seduc- 
ing spirits and the doctrines of devils speaking 
lies in hypocricy.^’ (I Tim. 4:1-3). 

Instead of fearing and loving confidently the 
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, they 
bestowed their love and confidence upon seducing 
spirits, consulting them, and placing their depend- 
ence upon their impious falsehoods. 

In connection with this demon worship also 
came idolatry. Spiritism is in itself idolatry; but 
it was found that by setting up images made out 
of copper and silver and gold they greatly facili- 
tated communion with their spirit lords. It was 


88 


FAMILIAR SPIRITS 


argued also that when images are really artis- 
tically constructed it is ennobling to contemplate 
them. 

The way for these iniquities was long in prep- 
aration. First came the worship of images in 
the churches. Of course it was not admitted that 
the image was really an object of worship. It was 
said that its contemplation facilitated worship, 
pious meditation. On the other hand, the minds 
of anti-christian religionists exalted the heathen 
philosophies. For years before the events em- 
phasized in this volume actually came to pass 
Christian Science falsely called ‘‘Christian’’ and 
“Science,” revived the old Hindoo philosophies. 
With the acceptation of the creed of idolatry came 
also the acceptance of the cult. 

All that we have said will therefore prepare us 
for a “most delightful conversation,” the Eev. 
Dr. Knowit had with a Hindoo through the me- 
dium of an uneducated young man. He had been 
invited by intimate friends to meet at their house 
a young man who had recently manifested very 
extraordinary powers which astonished himself 
quite as much as his friends. 

On the occasion upon which Dr. Knowit visited 
this young man for the first time, he conversed 
with him on other topics, and found that he was by 
no means an intelligent man. He made grammat- 
ical errors, and badly constructed his sentences. 
After he had conversed a little while he suddenly 



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HER OTHER SELF.” — Can the Spirit Leave the Body Without the Body Dying? This Picture In- 
dicates Such a Possibility. — P asre 90. 





FAMILIAR SPIRITS 


89 


appeared to faint and remained in an apparently 
unconscious condition. At length he slightly 
raised himself and with his eyes still closed, be- 
gan to converse in an unknown tongue. 

Among those present was a lady who had spent 
considerable time in India. She had never seen 
the young man before. When he began speaking, 
the woman whispered to Dr. Knowit that he was 
speaking in Hindus tanee. She also told him that 
the young man himself did not know the language 
in his normal state. Dr. Knowit was told that he 
might ask any questions he wished and the spirit 
in control of the young man would answer them, 
as he had done on previous occasions. Dr. Knowit 
thereupon began a conversation with the spirit. 

‘^You claim, do you not, to be a spiritual intel- 
ligence, speaking through the physical organs of 
Mr. A.r^ 

‘‘Yes,’^ came the answer, clearly and distinctly. 
Dr. Knowit next asked, ‘‘Who are youT’ The 
spirit replied, “I am a man who lived in India 
when in the earth-life and spent a great portion of 
time in studying the truths that relate to the 
world in which I now am. ’ ^ 

“Is Mr. A. (the medium) conscious that you 
are speaking through himT’ 

“No. The controlling power of his material 
body, which is his spirit body, is in a state of un- 
consciousness, and I am exercising the control.’’ 
“If you, as you say, are taking the place of the 


90 


FAMILIAK SPIRITS 


spirit of Mr. A. in regard to his physical body, 
has his spirit left that bodyT’ 

Answer: ‘‘Yes.^^ 

‘‘Where is it, or rather, where is heT^ Answer: 
“In this room, in a state of unconsciousness.^^ 

“How can that be? Can a man’s spirit leave 
his body before death?” 

“Most certainly it can, and does, at times. But 
you as a teacher of the Bible should know that 
truth.” 

“Does the Bible declare it?” 

“Most assuredly. Does not an apostle say that 
he was caught up into the third heaven of the 
spiritual world ; and yet his earthly body did not 
die until some years afterward ? ’ ’ 

“Yes, I am familiar with that statement; but 
St. Paul himself did not seem to be quite sure 
whether he was in the body or out of it.” 

“That is quite possible. Many persons after 
passing through what is called dying, having left 
the earthly body behind, do not, for a while, real- 
ize that it has been cast off. They are still after 
the change, so really men and women. The apostle, 
when he had the experience mentioned, was in a 
state of trance. ’ ’ 

“A little while before death the spirit body of 
a person releases itself from the physical form 
and floats at full length above the latter, with 
which it is still cemented by something not unlike 
a fine cord. The physical body as yet, is still alive. 


FAMILIAR SPIRITS 


91 


but it no longer contains the man. He is in the 
spirit body, but unconscious. When that fine 
spiritual cord is snapped, the separation is af- 
fected, and the material life dies. You have the 
physical counterpart of this cord in the connection 
that exists between the mother and the babe at 
birth. The severance of the cord is the prelimi- 
nary of the entrance of both the man and the babe 
into a higher plane of being. ^ ’ 

The Eev. Dr. Knowit was greatly interested in 
the philosophy of this spirit. He next asked him. 
What is your object in trying to control the body 
of the medium?^’ The spirit answered, ‘‘To es- 
tablish a communication through him with the 
world I have left. To try to convince men of the 
fact of a world of spirit. Your Bible is full of 
testimony regarding it, and you profess to accept 
its teachings ; but not one in every thousand who 
attend your churches grasps the truths concerning 
the Spiritual World that Scripture declares. Many 
who read the Bible school themselves to think that 
all the spiritual facts recorded therein actually 
did take place thousands of years ago; but ask 
them to believe that like things are happening 
now; what will they say? Will they not declare it 
to be incredible and absurd? 

‘ ‘ Do you suppose that the spiritual world is now 
different from what it was before, and at the time 
when Christ sojourned on your earth? Nearly all 
the phases of spiritual manifestation described in 


92 


FAMILIAR SPIRITS 


the Bible are present occurrences. Because the 
tendency of men^s minds is too materialistic this 
truth is not better realized. There is an ever in- 
creasing number who are reading their Bible more 
intelligently, and perceiving great truths declared 
therein which have been lost sight of during past 
centuries. A great wave of spiritual influence is 
passing over your world now, and breaking 
through the hard crust of materialistic thought 
and feeling. Some of your great thinkers and 
preachers are beginning to acknowledge the near- 
ness of the spirit world. 

‘‘Evil is growing less in the universe of God. 
So many of you fail to realize that God is working 
for the triumph of good in the world of spirit. In 
spite of your Bible which tells you Christ preached 
his gospel to spirits, that they might live unto 
God, you can only think of him as exercising his 
saving power on the restricted field of earthly ex- 
istence.’^ (“Man and the Spiritual World,” pp. 
151 - 172 ). 

In this way did our benevolent spirit discourse 
with the Eev. Dr. Knowit. He showed him how 
the great teachers in the pulpit who had so long 
taught the “wider mercy” of God were perfectly 
right, and were inspired in their great work by 
such benevolent disembodied creatures as thisj 
Hindoo. He showed how the Bible was misunder- 
stood and mis-interpreted. Only of late years 
were men coming into the full light and liberty 


FAMILIAR SPIRITS 


93 


of the truth. He showed him also how in the days 
of Israel of old the world was dominated by a 
class of evil spirits, and how in consequence Israel 
was forbidden to have intercourse with these de- 
ceptive wicked spirits. Had they been of the same 
class that he, the Hindoo, such a ban would never 
have been placed upon Israel. He admitted that 
there were still evil spirits abroad who tried to 
commune with the children of men, and that such 
spirits did great harm where they were not recog- 
nized and avoided. 

Dr. Knowit remained long enough at the home 
of his friend to see the young man come to him- 
self. He also realized that the young man him- 
self knew nothing at all of what had been said in 
the time he was in the trance. When all was over 
Dr. K. thanked his people for the pleasant evening 
they had given him, and assured them that there 
could be no possible harm in communing with so 
exaltd a being as the Hindoo. 

As he went to his home he made up his mind 
that he would investigate for himself all the 
beauteous revelation this class of spirits were 
making to the world, and give to his people from 
time to time, all that was new and beautiful. Thus 
it was that the Rev. Dr. Knowit was deceived as 
hundreds since the days of Ahab have been de- 
ceived and destroyed. We shall see what effect 
this exalted interview had upon our friend, the 
Rev. Dr. Knowit. 


CHAPTEE VII. 



The autumn and winter following the eventful 
summer of which we have said so much, passed as 
other seasons. It is true the face of nature was 
greatly changed, so that whole districts were 
transformed. In many instances those who had 
been away from home during the earthquake did 
not recognize their former place of abode when 
they returned. 

liie people were as greatly changed as the face 
of nature. It is true they tried hard to forget the 
trying and terrible events through which they had 
passed, but with every studied attempt at cheer- 
fulness they betrayed to each other that the events 
were all too fresh in their minds. There was in 
every face a lingering shadow which hung over 
every attempt at cheerfulness like a dark cloud at 
noon-day. Men seldom spoke of what they had 
witnessed or how they had fared as individuals. 

(94) 


BEST A WHILE. 


95 


Even the sorrow for their dead, the only sorrow 
from which humanity is loath to be divorced, was 
never mentioned among their fellows. It seemed 
as if the people tried very hard to be gay during 
the social season of the fall and winter ; but with 
all their efforts it could clearly be seen by the 
careful observer that, like actors on the stage, 
they had assumed a part which they determined 
to carry out, all the while recognizing that what 
they did was not real. 

Talitha Cumi, the home of Grace Dolent, was 
crowded to its utmost capacity all the year. In 
fact Talitha Cumi was no exception in this re- 
spect. Every hospital, every asylum for the un- 
fortunate and friendless was in the same condi- 
tion. Many who had been injured in the earth- 
quake remained cripples all their lives; others 
soon recovered sufficiently to leave the asylums 
that had sheltered them, but they had no homes to 
which to go. It was natural in those cases for 
them to cling to the place which had sheltered 
them in the hour of their sorest need. 

When summer came it proved especially hot 
and depressing. The death rate was extremely 
high. It seemed as if many died because they had 
lost all desire to live, or at most, to escape any rep- 
etition of the scenes through which they had 
passed the summer before. All this sadness told 
heavily upon the sensitive and sympathetic nature 
of Grace Dolent who was in the habit of making 


BEST A WHILE. 


% 

everybody’s sorrow her own. Sometime in August 
it was found that her overtaxed nature could en- 
dure the strain no longer. Her physician told her 
that she must leave the city and every thought of 
her work and go to some quiet country place, and 
there remain until the summer was ended. 

There was a place about one hundred and fifty 
miles away from her city where she had once 
spent a few months when her father and mother 
were still alive and she a mere child. She re- 
membered how she sat of an evening watching the 
river glide silently between two mountains which 
seemed as much alike as two brothers. In her 
childish simplicity she imagined that they must 
have been separated by some great giant and the 
river placed between them to keep them forever 
apart. She remembered how she used to sit on the 
balcony of the place which was her home that sum- 
mer, and watch the shadows grow deeper and 
deeper on the dark green of the mountain farthest 
away, whilst the nearer mountain seemed still 
bathed in the light of the early evening. By and 
by she would see the sky redden as if the city four- 
teen miles away were suddenly being licked up by 
some great conflagration. In a few moments more 
the edge of the mountain itself would become red 
and a great ball of fire would cause the foliage to 
stand forth in startling and almost animated dis- 
tinctness. In a few moments more the round disk 
of the full moon would protrude above the foliage 


REST A WHILE. 


97 


of the mountain, and then the other part of the 
huge globe would elongate as if loath to leave the 
dark green of the lovely earth. In the quiet of the 
night, when the hum of industry ceased she would 
hear the gentle ripple of the waters as the moon- 
beams kissed them, as if they were murmuring 
love notes to the moon. 

All these pleasant memories came to Grace Do- 
lent as she thought of a place where she might for 
a little while, forget her sadness and lay down the 
hea^y burden of her toil which of late seemed to 
crush her to the earth. She made up her mind 
that she would go to this very spot. Perhaps she 
would learn that the face of nature was so changed 
that all that was pleasant would be so no longer. 
However true this might be, she determined to 
find out. 

The church which Grace Dolent attended al- 
ways took a deep interest in Talitha Cumi. In fact 
there was no church in the city which took so much 
interest in charitable work of every kind as did 
this one. Nearly all the directors of the home were 
members of Dr. Knowit^s church. He was ex- 
pected to accompany the trustees in their quar- 
terly visits to Talitha Cumi. Dr. Knowit did this 
with great pleasure. He boasted that the work a 
man did, the interest he took in the welfare of 
others fitted him for the life to come. No one dis- 
puted this; but the Doctor made the mistake in 
causing men to believe that their works save them. 

7 


98 


BEST A WHILE. 


Dr. Knowit had splendid opportunity of becom- 
iug acquainted with Grace Dolent. He saw her at 
almost every service in his church, he met her in 
the Home whenever duty took him there; he met 
her frequently at the bed-side of the suffering 
where she was always looked upon as an angel of 
peace and blessed ministration. 

Dr. Knowit was unmarried. He made his home 
with an imcle who was one of the prominent mem- 
bers of St. PauDs, as his church was called. He 
was fond of every pleasure, the fact that he was 
a minister of the Gospel may have restrained him 
somewhat. He did go to the theatre, ‘‘but only to 
the best plays. He had no objection to his peo- 
ple dancing, and several times he led the dance in 
social gatherings in the homes of his people. He 
believed that the noblest animal on earth is the 
horse, and he could see no harm in going to see a 
horse race “conducted on strictly moral prin- 
ciples. ’ ^ 

Of course, from all I have said with regard to 
Dr. Knowit we will naturally infer that he would 
not fall in love with Grace Dolent. She was his 
opposite in everything. She was a tall blonde. 
Her complexion was as faultless as her character. 
Her long golden hair was gathered in a wealth of 
beauty about her shapely head. Her eyes were 
as blue as the sky into which she so often looked 
when her heart was sad, or she needed inspiration 
for her work. Dr. Knowit admired her demeanor, 


BEST A WHILE. 


99 


her quiet beauty; but she was too subdued for 
him, he often said to himself. He admired her 
faith in God and His word ; but she was ‘Hoo much 
of a literalist^^ he often told her. It was plain 
that some of the prophecies could not be literally 
fulfilled. Then too the promises for God’s people 
contained too much to be literally true. He often 
told Grace so when she pointed to a particular 
promise. Whilst therefore Grace and Dr. Knowit 
were one in faith they were widely dissimilar in 
the interpretation of their belief. 

Dr. Knowit was the first to see that Grace 
needed rest. He saw the roses fade from her 
cheeks. The old light still sparkled in her deep 
blue eyes, the depth of whose meaning he con- 
fessed to himself, he was never quite able to 
fathom. It was Dr. Knowit who suggested to her 
physician that he should recommend her to take a 
rest. In fact he insisted that Grace must obey the 
doctor’s command. He knew she would plead 
want of time; he therefore contrived to find some 
one to take her place, before her physician told 
her of the needed change. Besides all this, he 
knew there were many of those whom Grace had 
rescued who could well take her place for a while, 
at least. 

Grace did not plead poverty, nor did she ask 
herself or anyone else, where the means were to 
come from for the trip. The motto of her life was. 

Trust in the Lord and do good; so shalt thou 
dwell in the land and verily thou shalt be fed. ’ ’ Dr. 


100 


BEST A WHILE. 


Knowit simply mentioned the matter of Grace’s 
need, and the ladies to whom he mentioned it soon 
had one hundred dollars for the proposed vaca- 
tion. Dr. Knowit and the ladies who supplied the 
funds knew the simple life of the Christian girl, 
and therefore knew that one hundred dollars 
would keep her for weeks in her chosen place for 
rest and recuperation. 

Dr. Knowit did not hand the money to Grace, 
because he knew she would not receive it from his 
hands. A committee of two ladies called the same 
day that the physician told Grace of her needed 
change and tendered the gift. With tear-filled 
eyes, she expressed her regret at being compelled 
to rest and using money for herself which might 
have been well spent in helping others. She looked 
upon the gift and the necessity for receiving it as 
being the will of her heavenly Father, and so did 
not hesitate in using it as they directed. 

It was an excessively warm day in August when 
Grace Dolent went to her chosen village in the 
country. She arrived at her destination the same 
day. One of the old friends of her father met 
her and took her to his own home, the very house 
in which she had spent her time during her so- 
journ with her parents in the village. The house 
had suffered severely from the earthquake of the 
year before. 

But as she sat on the shaded porch, as of old the 
cloud shadows crept softly over the dark green, 


REST A WHILE. 


101 


distant mountains, and down the hill slopes, fleck- 
ing the surface of the river far below, where the 
waters slept and dreamed of the unfathomable 
blue arched above, which, however it might be ob- 
scured by the driving clouds, yet stretched eter- 
nally from mountain top to mountain top, unsul- 
lied by the petty storm of the valley, changelessly 
flooded with sunlight, like God ^s mercy in the lives 
of men. 

Still, as of old, in the waning season, summer 
trailed the soft haze of her filmy draperies adown 
the hill slopes, fragrant with her breath in purple 
grape and tinted apple, and scattered the golden 
rod with lavish hand, as though the sleepy valleys 
full to the brim with golden sunlight had splashed 
and filled the bright gold over the rimming hills. 
Here summer loved to linger, brooding pensively 
upon the threshold ere the latch of the autum was 
lifted, and she slipped away. Softly she glided 
from woodland to woodland, dropping the starry 
asters, her sandal latchets, as she hurried in con- 
fusion across the open fields. Here the quiet day 
lingered and kissed the hilltops ere it vanished 
slowly over the mountain crest, and the stars 
shone out ere yet the crimson and the tender 
violet, the gold and the pale green curtains of the 
night were fully drawn behind the fiery chariot of 
the lord of day. Later a golden glow crept up the 
dark purple heavens at the edge of the mountains 
where they leaned their mighty shoulders toward 


102 


BEST A WHILE. 


one another over the river flowing between. The 
black tracery of the forest on the mountain summit 
stood outlined upon a shining background, and 
the silvery moon rose reluctantly from her couch 
of fir trees, and flooded the valley with her soft 
light as she floated like a great lamp, hung in the 
very peak of summer’s pavilion, while beneath, 
summer herself slumbered, having drawn the vel- 
vet, black shadows of the mountains about her like 
curtains, drawn too, at the head of the glistening 
pathway of the river flung out across the valley 
from her pavilion doors, like a glittering tapestry, 
adown which she would hurry at dawn, dewey-eyed 
from her dreams, to brood over the valleys. 

Our interests in life more than our comforts, 
make life desirable. When once you and I have 
no anxiety in life except as to what we shall eat 
and wear, when once we have no interest in our 
work beyond its making us a full purse, we will 
have lost life’s value indeed. We had better then 
allow a hacking cough to rattle us to pieces, a 
burning fever to consume us than to wear our life 
away in the service of self. We ask for many days, 
but after all happiness lies not in length of days, 
but in depth of feeling, in grand moments. ‘^Life 
without endeavor is like entering a jewel mine and 
coming out empty-handed. ’ ’ 

It was Grace Dolent ’s interest in others quite as 
much as the wholesome food, pure air, and clear, 
refreshing water that brought the rose back to her 


REST A WHILE. 


103 


cheek, and the litheness to her step. It was best 
that this interest in the atfairs of others should 
follow her to this quiet place rather than that it 
should lead her in a ceaseless round of duty as it 
had done the greater part of her life. She did 
rest, but her rest did not consist in casting aside 
all thought of duty, and in plunging into amuse- 
ments that rob the soul of its life. The piety of 
the people there as in the city was at a low ebb. 
She went to the church of her choice on the Sab- 
bath and during the mid-week. At the latter ser- 
vice she made manifest the light she walked by, 
the strength which stayed her. Through her in- 
fluence the hearts of the villagers were softened to- 
wards those innocent sutferers from heat and foul 
air, in the city. A score or more were given a 
home for a month in that town. It was owing to 
the kindly solicitude of Grace that those little 
waifs learned that not all the world is made up of 
brick walls and fetid odors, but somewhere the 
world still exists as God made it. 

Grace was as happy as she was busy in her new 
work of finding temporary homes for the city chil- 
dren. August passed before she was aware of it. 
September with its cooler days and longer even- 
ings made her village home a most charming 
place. But the fact that autumn had come re- 
minded her that it was high time for her to return 
to her work. She felt herself strong and ready to 


104 


REST A WHILE. 


assume the heavier burdens she was in habit of 
bearing. 

There was one duty and pleasure in this new 
found home she was loath to give up. That was 
the duty of every Wednesday evening meeting two 
or three young women for half an hour’s talk 
about the Word before they went to prayer meet- 
ing. They had had precious times together. The 
Bible was becoming a new book to them. The time 
was all too short to read and study thoroughly, 
even one book of the Bible; but these young wo- 
men had received a new power into their lives 
which they had never known before Grace Dolent 
came to the village. 

We see therefore that Grace made friends and 
was helpful to others whilst she was being helped 
herself. This was because she loved everybody, 
loved without distinction, calculation or measure. 
Because she lavished her love upon the poor who 
have so few to love them, upon the rich who often 
need it most. Because of her wealth of love the 
sunlight laughed into her eyes at morning from 
the dewdrops, at noon from among the green 
branches, and at evening from among the shad- 
ows. The pure, cool zephyr whispered its cheery 
tune of vigorous life for their guest, and every 
star at evening looked down upon her to remind 
her that earth is still crowned with heaven. 

So it was that the eight weeks she had given 
herself for rest and recuperation were over all too 


REST A WHILE. 


105 


soon. The day for her departure came. Her little 
belongings were gathered for the journey, and she 
went away richer in health, richer in the number 
of her friends, and above all, richer in the good 
grace of her Master whom she so assiduously 
served. 



CHAPTEE VIII. 


and Fire Mingled 
with Blood’’ 


It was only a few days until Grace Dolent was 
as busy as ever in the home which in its interests 
and manifold duties, had become a part of herself. 
All the time of her vacation, and for a month af- 
terward, the Eev. Dr. Knowit was in Europe. He 
went there because one of his rich members sent 
him. The rich man said Knowit needed a broad- 
ening of his ideas. He was becoming too narrow. 
He had been silly enough to declare to him pri- 
vately that he believed the earthquake and shower 
of meteors had been foretold in the Bible. He 
would have preached a sermon advocating that 
theory had not he dissuaded him. The rich mem- 
ber declared that Knowit was entirely too much 
under the influence of the mission workers. It was 
all right for people who had no hope for this life 
to be all the time speaking about ‘Ghe heavenly 
home’’ and the ‘‘speedy coming of Christ;” but 
for a bright, well informed young man like ^owit 
( 106 )‘ 


HAIL AND FIRE MINGLED WITH BLOOD. 107 

to become solemn and dreamy was the spoiling of 
a ^‘good, popular preacher.’^ 

We are not sufficiently interested in Knowit to 
follow him in his journey abroad. We know how- 
ever that when he came back and saw Grace Do- 
lent all the seriousness had faded out of his coun- 
tenance, and for all we know, out of his heart also. 
He told her that he had witnessed the great inter- 
national foot races, the rowing contests, and the 
horse races at Derby. He said, he felt renewed in 
mind, spirit and body. Altogether he had had a 
very pleasant trip, and he meant that his people 
should have the benefit of what he had seen and 
experienced. He would give a series of Sunday 
evening talks on Athletics. This subject he in- 
tended to announce as ‘‘How our English Cousins 
exemplify their belief in Juvenal’s maxim, ‘Mens 
Sana in corpore sano.’ ” Then he intended to 
give a talk on London Stock Exchange, or “How 
Our English Cousins out-do Wall Street.” “A 
Day in the World’s Greatest Museum,” “London 
Streets in August,” etc., would furnish him ma- 
terial for interesting talks all the winter. He 
would show his rich friend that he was as much 
alive and as observant as ever, and that his being 
sent to Europe was a good investment. 

Grace Dolent bit her lips whilst two great tears 
rolled down her cheeks, which she had vainly tried 
to suppress, and which Knowit had not failed to 
see. Then Knowit with a strange expression on 


108 HAIL AND FIRE MINGLED WITH BLOOD. 

his face, began to talk about her own vacation. 
She told him much of what we have already re- 
corded in these pages. He tried to upbraid her 
for working whilst she should have rested, but she 
knew as well as he, that he had no heart in his 
words. He felt that Grace had had much the more 
profitable vacation. 

Grace also told Knowit how for the coming 
winter she intended to be more thoughtful, more 
given to prayer, in short to be more spiritual. By 
spirituality she recognized more than a mental 
state of exaltation, an ecstacy. She believed in a 
spirituality which is more than an exalted hour, 
or a vision caught from a brain weakened by fast- 
ing and supplication. She believed spirituality to 
be a power which transforms falsehood into truth, 
selfishness into generosity, hate into love. She 
had long since realized that the spirituality which 
exhausted itself in an ecstacy of feeling was not 
the spirituality of her Master who constantly went 
about doing good. 

Grace Dolent in all the multitude of her respon- 
sibilities was a happy girl. She believed that no 
one has the right to go about unhappy, least of all 
the Christian. She believed that everyone owes it 
to himself, his friends, his enemies, if you please, 
in fact to society in general, to be happy. She had 
often realized that there was no duty the fulfill- 
ment of which did not make her happier, and 
qualify her the more for the enjoyment of the best 
things in life, 


HAIL AND FIRE MINGLED WITH BLOOD. 109 


We have thus tried to give another page from 
the life of these two people who are taken not as 
the worst and the best in the Church of their day, 
but rather as examples of the very best in a time 
when the sword of God’s justice seemed drawn, 
awaiting the moment when the threatened execu- 
tion should begin. Perhaps to complete our rep- 
resentation of the times we ought to push our cur- 
tain which veils society, a little farther aside, and 
study others. Perhaps after all, these two are 
sufficient to show how near a man may be to the 
kingdom of heaven and yet be thrust out in the 
end. Be this as it may, the faith that takes firm 
hold on God is the faith that wins. 

Geologists tell us that the earth has undergone 
great changes to make it a fit habitation for man. 
These changes occurred in epochs. There was for 
instance, an age during which the great limestone 
beds were formed. That it was an epoch which 
extended through many years no one can doubt. 
There was also a carboniferous era, during which 
great giants of the forest exalted themselves only 
to fall in a few years and to make the great beds 
of coal which drive the wheels of commerce to- 
day. 

There are those who say that all this is the work 
of chance. It is simply the result of blind inex- 
orable law over-ruling matter. It is true there are 
few who believe this. ^‘The fool has said in his 
heart, ^ there is no God. ^ ’ Others say, that be- 


110 HAIL AND FIRE MINGLED WITH BLOOD. 

hind these great chances, over-ruling and controh 
ing them is the Divine Will. All evolution is God’s 
work. These men believe the Bible account of 
creation, except that they do not believe that God 
in a word, created light, or caused the dry grounds 
to appear. 

It is not the province of this book to discuss 
theories of creation, or to attempt to prove that 
the Bible account of creation is the only rational 
one, although we believe this thoroughly. One 
thing is certain, after each geological epoch, 
higher forms of life appear. Whether all these 
fonns of life were anterior to the series of change 
and acts of creation described in Gen. 1 :3-31, is a 
question which has enlisted the interest of scien- 
tist and theologian alike. 

The events described in the chapters of this 
book may have directly or indirectly produced 
climatic changes. That they did produce changes 
in the topography of the country has already been 
asserted. One thing is certain, no geologist has 
ever studied and no theologian has ever inter- 
preted Scripture containing the record of causes 
which have produced greater physical and social 
changes than those to which these pages refer. 

Modern science has speculated a great deal, and 
is still speculating as to what shall yet take place 
physically in the earth. There are some scientists 
who predict that this old world will some day be- 
come weary and exhausted in its revolutions about 


HAIL AND FIRE MINGLED WITH BLOOD. Ill 


the sun and then drop into the great luminary. In 
this way we and all that is ours may yet become 
fuel to warm and light other plants. This is the 
only way that some people will ever be the means 
of giving any benefit to others. This statement 
of our world dropping into the sun need not worry 
anybody now living, for it is not likely to occur 
even when we base our opinion on scientific hy- 
pothesis. 

Other scientists maintain that quite the contrary 
will occur. They assert that this world wdll prob- 
ably fly off into space, and perhaps collide with 
some other planet, or fly at its own sweet will, an 
erratic wanderer in the eternal fields of space. Still 
others who have no opinion as to the continuance 
of the world in its present path, say that it is now 
rapidly cooling. It will one day be without an at- 
mosphere. Then it will be like our moon which 
has already cooled off, and is incapable of sup- 
porting either animal or vegetable life. Then our 
great cities with palaces and public buildings will 
stand deserted. The dust of the ages will have 
found sufficient atmosphere even when man and 
animal life can no longer be sustained, to be 
wafted upon the richest treasures of silver and 
gold, and the products of the highest art. Then 
oceans and rivers will have evaporated. Only great 
valleys, dry arroyos and frightful chasms will be 
seen where once the commerce of nations floated, 
and conquering fleets plowed their way. 


112 HAIL AND FIKE MINGLED WITH BLOOD. 

The events described in this volume are in sup- 
port of none of these theories. They occur prior 
to the time when, as the Bible asserts, ^Hhe ele- 
ments shall melt with fervent heat.^’ Our author- 
ity for the recording of these events in the phys- 
ical world and in society, is the same infallible 
Word, which also asserts that ‘‘the elements shall 
melt in fervent heat, the earth also and the works 
which are therein shall be burned up.^’ That word 
which tells us “how the worlds were framed by 
the Word of God.^^ Until some one will be able 
to show that the fulfilled prophecies were fulfilled 
by mere chance, and that Jesus the mediator of the 
new covenant was either deceived, or himself an 
impostor, we shall write without the fear of con- 
tradiction. The events we have already described 
are in themselves an infallible witness of the sure 
Word. 

The year which followed the great earthquake 
was fruitful, yielding seed for the sower and bread 
for the reaper. The fruit trees were ladened with 
the most luscious of their product, and the vines 
hung weighted with sweet clusters. 

Not only was this true in the country of which 
we are in the habit of speaking most constantly, 
in these pages, but it was true over all the earth. 
At this time the fertile plains of Shinar had again 
been brought beneath the plow of the husband- 
man. Years before a railroad had been built to 
the far East and the Capital of the Occident en- 


HAIL AND FIEE MINGLED WITH BLOOD. 113 


hanced the value of the fertile soil of the Orient. 
A line of railroads, in fact, now bound Egypt, 
Smyrna and Gonstantinople with Vienna, Paris 
and London. Grapes cut from the vines in Syria, 
oranges from the groves along the Euphrates, and 
figs from the plains of Shinar graced the tables 
of rich and poor in London and Paris, Glasgow 
and Vienna. 

The Euphrates had been made navigable for a 
distance of more than 1,200 miles. The ships 
which sailed on his bosom came from every land 
under the sun. Towns and cities whose names had 
never appeared upon the map, sprung into being 
and developed rapidly under the fostering hand 
of the commerce of all nations. The ancient city 
of Babylon was renewed and perpetuated in a 
modem Babylon wider in the extent of its square 
miles, more colossal in its great buildings, and 
more enduring in the materials used in the con- 
struction of its palaces and buildings for the ad- 
ministration of its business with its own and the 
peoples from foreign lands. 

With its ships and its passengers congregating 
on their decks, the great city bearing the name of 
her famous ancestor and built on its site became 
the real cosmopolis of modern times. Upon her 
streets there pushed and jostled each other the 
gold-kings and money-lords of the world. 

These money-lords dealt in all kinds of goods 
and products, They paid the most precious of 
8 


114 HAIL AND FIRE MINGLED WITH BLOOD. 

metals for the costliest articles of clothing, 
precious aromatics, ointments and spices. The city 
maintained the style and opulence of the Occident, 
the wealth and grandeur of both Occident and 
Orient. Her sons and daughters, ‘‘were decked in 
fine linen, and purple and scarlet, gold and pre- 
cious stones and pearl. Within her confines the 
merchant found a market for his wares, the arti- 
san for his skill. Ship-masters and ship-owners 
found here a haven for their wares, a port for 
their lading. It is no wonder therefore that the 
“money barons^’ of the United States should en- 
deavor to form a trust which was to include the 
richest of all the money kings, and which was to 
be so wide in its sweep as to include every salable 
commodity. The purse strings of the nations were 
thus to be in the hands of a universal power, zeal- 
ous for each other ^s interest, vigilant for each’s 
other’s welfare. The kings of the earth were to 
be its patrons, and the princes of the world its 
obedient servants. 

The new Babylon was the center of religion as 
well as the center of commerce. Her religion was 
the “religion of civilized humanity” and its god 
was Mammon. Its temples were its banks and 
warehouses, its pleasure parks and its seaside re- 
sorts. Men came to this mighty city on pleasure 
and for the cultivation of their aesthetic and 
spiritual natures, as well as in the interests of 
trade and commerce. 


HAIL AND FIRE MINGLED WITH BLOOD. 


115 


It is true, for a whole year following the earth- 
quake of which we have spoken, trade was almost 
paralyzed. Sailors were afraid to sail the high 
seas, lest the terrifying experiences of the year be- 
fore should be repeated and overwhelm them. 
Great buildings in the city of Babylon itself, whose 
foundations had been planted upon adamant 
foundations and which had been erected upon the 
most approved style, had been the first to totter 
and fall, hurling their occupants into the arms of 
waiting death, or burying them beneath debris in 
awful torture and lingering agony. It was no 
wonder therefore that here in the very cradle of 
commerce born anew only a few years before, 
there should linger for a longer while the suspicion 
of a repetition of the destructive and terrifying 
phenomena 

It is the province of this book to record the 
awful, the awe-inspiring and the death dealing, 
because it is recording the judgments of God vis- 
ited upon the children of disobedience, and record- 
ing them on the best authority, the unfailing Word 
of God. 

The winter wore away, and there was much to 
stimulate thought and call forth effort on the part 
of those who were striving to win souls and to 
make their own calling and election sure. Dr. 
Knowit preached his sermons on what he had seen, 
and how he had been impressed on his brief trip 
of the summer before. Of course it was no rarity 


116 HAIL AND FIRE MINGLED WITH BLOOD. 

for anyone to go abroad now. We do not mean to 
intimate it ; but we do mean to say that men still 
made it a point to preach, and to avoid preaching 
the gospel. So it was that Dr. Knowit’s church 
was well attended, not so much because he preach- 
ed about ^‘Our English Cousins/^ but because he 
could talk real learnedly, and because he was a 
good thinker. 

Dr. Knowit, because he had a large and influ- 
ential congregation, was approached by a commit- 
tee who had formed themselves for the purpose 
of evangelistic etfort among the people. This com- 
mittee asked the Doctor whether he would not 
lend his influence and presence wherever practical, 
to such an effort to be made in a large hall, cen- 
trally located ; but he decidedly and pre-emptorily 
refused to countenance the work in any way. He 
said the time for such e:fforts had gone by. Only 
the most ignorant would attend. He was deter- 
mined to avoid any and everything in religion 
which was of an emotional nature. Many other 
clergymen of the city who were approached on the 
subject said very much the same thing. It is need- 
less to say that the meetings were not held. The 
members of the different churches on the other 
hand, engaged in many important social functions 
during the winter. 

Grace Dolent^s work at the mission did not 
change in its character. Sin was still sin in God^s 
sight and in its awful consequences. It did seem 


HAIL AND FIRE MINGLED WITH BLOOD. 117 


to her that people could no longer be reached until 
in the final results in their course of wrong doing. 
Her own prayer meetings given to the general 
public which were meant for the ‘ ‘ submerged ^ ^ of 
the district in which the Home was located were 
poorly attended. When once in a while she thought 
she met with a sincere inquirer, she generally 
found that when physical help was obtained, and 
the smarting wounds of sin mollified, the penitents 
returned to the old course of wrong-doing. Yet 
withal, she found some jewels for her Master 
crown, some trophies for the day of triumph. 
Moreover she drank deeply from that goblet which 
is fashioned by angel hands and set about with 
diamonds, the goblet filled at Eden^s waters, the 
goblet patience, whose drafts make strong, and 
give sweet rest. 

When spring came and the gentle zephyrs made 
the meadows roll and swell in the billowy fra- 
grance of daisies and crimson clover, men were 
just as buoyant with hope and just as eager for 
wealth and pleasure as ever. And the earth prom- 
ised much. The trees were white in blossoming 
beauty, the young grain promised rich harvest. 
The old hum of toil and merry-making filled the 
hours of the day and night in city and hamlet 
alike. 

As the summer advanced the heat each day be- 
came more oppressive. Many recalled the summer 
before the last, the summer so full of disaster and 


118 HAIL AKD FIRE MINGLED WITH BLOOD. 

death. Those in the cities planned early and long 
vacations. Those in the country hoped to gather 
early their crops so that they might enjoy rest and 
change. For after all, it is not the heavy burden 
that chafes the back, but it is the same bu*rden 
borne upon the same shoulders in the same way, 
that galls. 

One afternoon in July when in the vicinity of 
our city in which lived the only two people whose 
names we have yet learned in this narrative, — one 
afternoon, when the wheat was harvested and 
when the cattle had ceased from browsing among 
the stubble, and were panting in the shadows, the 
sky became overcast with clouds. No bright 
patches of sky were anywhere to be seen. These 
clouds were so dark that they swallowed the light 
of day as fully as if the sun had been cast into a 
pit. After a while the angry thunders muttered, 
then rolled in long deep cadences through the 
heavens until their echoes were caught up by the 
earth ana returned to the skies as if in sullen de- 
fiance. The generation of men who had so often 
witnessed the awful and terrifying, like brutes 
when they see the same lash uncoil and hear its 
whistle, slink away in dread, tried to hide them- 
selves from what they knew boded no good. Dogs 
whined and barked in deep hollow gutturals and 
crept into corners of houses and barns. Cattle 
uurried bellowing through the darkness, and fowls 
hid their heads in thickets and the tall grass, or 


HAIL AND FIRE MINGLED WITH BLOOD. 


119 


fluttered helplessly upon the heads of men and 
women. 

After a while the dark clouds became greyish 
white. Angry flashes of lightning continued and 
deep thunders rolled through the heavens. Then 
of a sudden hail and water and fire commingled, 
fell in torrents and in battering avalanches upon 
the earth. As it was in the day that Israel came 
out of Egypt, ^ ^ so now, the Lord sent thunder and 
hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground. 

So there was hail and fire mingled with the 
hail, very grievous. The storm like the earth- 
quake, extended far and wide, but the results were 
not as terrible as in the earthquake. The destruc- 
tion was appalling nevertheless. About one-third 
of the crops throughout the world were destroyed. 
The grass, every green tree, every blade of corn 
was burnt, withered as in the blast of an electric 
furnace. In many instances as in the meteoric 
shower, fires were started and buildings burned, 
but this was the effect of the lightning and not the 
effect of the blast and hail that consumed the trees 
and grass. The storm or whatever it may be 
called, carried fearful havoc among the forests, 
orchards and timber lands. 

The next day when the sun shone again and 
nature seemed to have returned to the even tenor 
of her way, men came forth from their hiding- 
places where they had joined with beasts in the 
mad wail of their agony. They had prayed in 


120 HAIL AHD FIRE MINGLED WITH BLOOD. 

their terror, but now they felt ashamed of their 
fears as they looked into the faces of one another 
and remembered their terror. 

Just as the magicians of ancient Egypt sought 
to produce the miracles which Moses wrought, 
thus making void the work of Moses with which he 
sought to convince the stubborn heart of Pharaoh 
of the power and majesty of the Almighty, so the 
savants of those days, after the hail and fire and 
blood, harangued the people or wrote long articles 
in the papers to explain the phenomena. First of 
all, they asserted, that blood rains and blood red 
snows even, are not unknown to the world. On 
the 17th of August, 1819, Captain Boss saw the 
moimtains surrounding Baffin Bay covered four 
miles with blood red snow, to the depth of many 
feet. Nor is this a phenomenon confined to the 
Arctic regions. Sussare found it on Mt. St. Ber- 
nard, in 1778. Blood rains have fallen more than 
once. The orator, Cicero, relates that a report 
was brought to the Eoman Senate, on one occasion 
that it had rained blood, also that the river Ara- 
tus had flowed with a bloody stream. Slight falls 
of this kind have occurred in almost every part of 
the globe. So these wise men tried to make the 
scenes through which they had passed an occur- 
rence of little import. They had forgotten how- 
ever, that God himself said, will show wonders 
in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath, 
blood and fire.’^ (Joel 2:30). If they had known 


HAIL AND FIRE MINGLED WITH BLOOD. 


121 


their Bibles half as well as they seemd to know 
the history of the world they would have been led 
to believe that the world had actually entered 
upon the times described in the prophets. Why 
men and women should he so anxious to know all 
about this world in which they live so short a 
time, and care so little about the world in which 
they must abide eternally, has always been a mar- 
vel to him who chronicles this narrative. 

The people of the whole world had scarcely re- 
covered from the fear and consternation into 
which they had been thrown before they beheld 
another cause for alarm. Astronomers in their 
observation of the heavens beheld a dark object 
coming between them and their field of vision. It 
was seen at different times and in different fields 
of space. Then its orbit contracted. After a while 
it seemed to he revolving about the earth. Then 
it became visible to the naked eye, appearing not 
unlike our moon, hut larger. Laymen and astron- 
omers indulged in speculation as to what would 
finally become of it. 

Few feared that it would ever interfere with our 
world. Some it is true, from the beginning prophe- 
sied that it would finally collide with the earth, 
and do untold damage. Finally everyone began 
to believe that the worst fears of the few would 
be realized. It was evidently revolving about the 
earth in a constantly contracting orbit. It now 
became the most conspicuous object in the 


122 


HAIL AND FIRE MINGLED WITH BLOOD 


heavens, seemingly shining with a light of its own. 
Then within an hour of great brilliancy and with 
a roar that could be heard in every land, it dis- 
appeared into the Pacific Ocean. The result was 
a great tidal wave, the like of which had never 
been experienced, at least not since geological 
ages, and within the knowledge of man. 

From Alaska to the extreme point of South 
America; and from Siberia, all along the eastern 
coast of Asia ; and in the islands of the Pacific, the 
destruction of life and property was appalling. 
The Pacific coast was denuded of its cities and 
animal and vegetable life. The great mountain 
chains, such as the Andes, which still remained 
after the earthquake of which we have already 
spoken, together with new mountains which nature 
had seemingly erected in self-defence, during the 
earthquake, against this very calamity, kept the 
waters from sweeping the continents. 

The great meteor, for such it in reality was, had 
plunged into the ocean at a white heat. For leagues 
and leagues the water hissed, seethed, boiling hot. 
Great pieces of rock exploded from the sides of 
the hot meteor and were hurled high into the air, 
falling with a great splash, back into the sea, miles 
away from the steaming mountain. These explo- 
sions continued for days, producing great clouds 
of steaming vapor. These overhung the ocean and 
the land as they must have done before God said : 
‘‘Let there be a firmament in the midst of the 






‘THE UNEXPECTED GUEST.”— The New Arrival Upon Whom All Eyes Are Fixed is the Prodigal 
Who Returns at a Most Inopportune Time — the Marriage of His Sister to the 
Rich Man of the Story. A Good Illustration of How the Devil Interrupts the 
Pleasures of His Bride at His Marriage CcInsummation. — Page 127. 


HAIL AND FIRE MINGLED WITH BLOOD. 


123 


waters, and let it divide the waters from the 
waters. No sail was anywhere to be seen upon 
the foaming, steaming seas. Every ship had gone 
down. The monsters of the deep, and great shoals 
of boiled fish were cast upon the shores as the 
monster tidal- wave receded. 

Some days after the burning mountain had 
fallen, the clouds of vapor which had overspread 
the skies, began to be precipitated. We have read 
in Holy Writ how the Lord sent thunder and hail 
and fire upon the land of Egypt. This miracle, if 
miracle it can be called, was now repeated on a 
larger and more terrible scale. The vapor in the 
higher regions of the atmosphere, was frozen into 
hail, and descended in a destructive and deafen- 
ing volley, whilst at the same time the volcanoes 
became active, vomiting fire and ashes. 

Destructive storms and tornadoes followed these 
phenomena. In places every green tree was strip- 
ped of its verdure, and the earth itself became dry 
and cracked as if it had been swept by fire. 


CHAPTEE IX. 


— 

*‘The Marriage Supper 

and the Prodigal.” 



Miss Lillian DeLisle is about to be wedded to a 
rich New Yorker. We do not know anything about 
the New Yorker, nor do we, you and I, know much 
about Miss DeLisle. For the present it is suffi- 
cient for us to know that she is a member of Dr. 
Knowit^s church, and therefore he has been asked 
to officiate at the wedding. Miss DeLisle herself, 
is the daughter of a multi-millionaire. Her mother 
also, is a member of Dr. Knowit’s church. The 
father is not. He says it is not necessary for him 
to be a member of the church. He is too busy, and 
he can go where he pleases. The doors of society 
are open to him. It is different with Mrs. DeLisle. 
She is a “devout’’ member of the church, and is 
said to be pious. Last year, during the whole of 
Lent she did not attend one card party, and it is 
said, she abstained from ices all the time. 

It will do us no harm to accompany Dr. Knowit 
to the wedding of Miss DeLisle. It takes place in 
( 124 ) 


IHE MAKKIAGE SUPPER AND PRODIGAL. 


125 


the commodious parlors of the DeLisles’ on ^‘the 
Avenue. ^ ^ I do not know that we shall be able to 
say much about the bride’s costume. This will no 
doubt be handsome enough and in keeping with the 
wealth and social standing of the DeLisles. Dr. 
Knowit heard it from the lips of one of the bosom 
friends of the bride, that her white satin slippers 
are interwoven with gold and silver threads, and 
are surmounted by buckles set with quartz crystals 
cut like diamonds. These slippers alone cost $150 
He was also told that the Swiss lace used on her 
dress skirts and underskirts cost $1000. 

It is in the feast, the wedding dinner, given at 
nine in the evening that we are specially inter- 
ested. It occurs immediately after the ceremony. 
They have the full wedding ceremony, and with 
the march, it will require one whole hour. The 
dinner is a gorgeous affair. The flowers alone cost 
five thousand dollars. The mosses were shipped 
from Florida. The orchids and roses were brought 
from different hot houses in different cities. There 
are multitudes of similar feasts the florist and 
decorator explained to Mrs. DeLisle, and thou- 
sands of dollars worth of flowers are used at all of 
them. 

One of the characteristics of this feast is the set- 
ting of tables. The table is set in the middle of 
the great dining hall. Mirrors are arranged to 
give the large room almost endless dimensions and 
the perfume ladened foliage of the tropical plants 


126 THE MAKKIAGE SUPPER AND PRODIGAL. 

adds to the effect. Costly draperies, the beautiful 
flowers and the rich silver and cut glass flashing 
their sparkling splendor, the exquisite perfume 
from the orange blossom in full bloom give the 
whole scene an almost supernatural beauty. The 
whole resembles a fairy scene more than an 
earthly feast where the feasters are but common 
clay. 

The ceremony is at last finished. We will now 
see the feasters as they enter whilst the orchestra 
is playing a march. Now they are being seated 
strictly according to their social standing of 
course, and the orchestra has changed its air into 
a soft sweet melody which it is said was written 
by a medium whilst in a trance. She said she 
heard the music on the planet Venus. Dr. Knowit 
does not ask a blessing, simply because he has 
prayed at least fifteen minutes during the cere- 
mony, and besides the orchestra is being well paid 
for its work. They were hired to furnish enter- 
tainment during the feast. 

We might spend much time in describing the 
guests and saying something about their jewels 
and costly attire; but even whilst we are looking 
over the festal hall with its proud, beautiful feast- 
ers, the unexpected occurs. 

Just as the first course is being finished, and 
there is a mild clatter of dishes and a low sound 
of many voices, in subdued conversation, scarcely 
perceptible in the midst of the soft strains from 


THE MAEEIAGE SUPPER AND PRODIGAL. 127 

the orchestra, there appears a new figure upon the 
scene. The decorators had grouped an embank- 
ment of palms into a graceful arch over the door 
through which the waiters made their exits and 
their entrances. This enbankment concealed one 
entire end of the room and reached to the ceiling. 
Suddenly and certainly unannounced there ap- 
peared the figure of a man in front of the enbank- 
ment. He commanded a full view of the entire 
hall, only a few of the guests having their backs 
toward him. The man held an old slouch hat in his 
hand, his hair was neatly combed and his face 
closely shaven. His fringed and frayed trousers 
scarcely reached to the top of his hob-nailed shoes. 
His coat was of a greenish cast and smooth as his 
face. For a moment he stood hesitatingly as if 
transfixed, and totally unprepared for the scene 
which met his gaze. Before the waiter or any of 
his fellow-servants comprehended the situation or 
seemed to know just what to do, the mother of the 
bride arose, and in a moment was by the side of 
the abashed and tramp-like figure, and before 
many of the guests comprehended the situation or 
knew that anything out of what was expected had 
occurred, the man was walking between the mother 
of the bride and a waiter who had taken him by 
the arm, and the three disappeared behind the 
foliage. 

It was fully twenty minutes from the time Mrs. 
DeLisle left her place at the table beside the bride- 


128 THE MARRIAGE SUPPER AND PRODIGAL. 

groom before she again occupied it. During her 
absence her daughter, the happy bride of half an 
hour before, sat silent and pallid. The roses and 
smiles which came and went at every compliment 
or bit of conversation refused to return. Her lips 
quivered when she attempted to smile or speak, 
and her hands trempled so violently that they re- 
fused to convey food to her lips. She tried to ac- 
count for her agitation by asking those close to 
her, what could possibly have induced her mother 
to accompany the waiter when he led the strange 
looking man from the room. How could he pos- 
sibly have eluded the butler? Could he possibly 
have come by the rear gate, but how could he have 
escaped the coachman and the servants which were 
constantly in the way along which he must have 
come ? To all this her father said nothing. He sat 
stolid, eyeing her forbiddingly. Her husband, on 
the other hand told her caressingly, not to worry. 
The man emboldened by hunger, had evidently en- 
tered by the rear door, into what he must have 
thought to be the conservatory. His manner had 
plainly shown that he was dazed and stupefied by 
the scene which met his eyes. 

At the end of twenty minutes which to her daugh- 
ter and her own husband had seemed an age, her 
mother again entered the room through the arch- 
way by which the guests had entered, and the head 
waiter bowed her to her place at the table. Mrs. 
DeLisle was a woman of splendid nervous organ- 


THE MABKIAGE SUPPER AND PRODIGAL. 


129 


ism, and met the interrogation in her husband's 
eyes with a knowing look. By way of explanation 
to those about her at the table she said ; ‘ ‘ The poor 
fellow made a mistake. He said he thought he was 
entering the conservatory instead of the festal 
hall. He hoped to call the attention of a servant, 
and ask for a bite to eat. He was profuse in his 
apologies. I ordered him to be fed. In fact I told 
the servants to give him everything he might wish 
to eat. I rather consider it a good omen that he 
should happen in here upon your wedding night. 
Does it not augur that you will always have plenty 
and that you will be the means of helping others ? ^ ^ 

To this her daughter made no reply. The old 
pallor was still in her face and she sat with her 
course before her untasted. Her mother professed 
not to notice her daughter’s demeanor, but at- 
tempted to act as if nothing unusual had trans- 
pired. Her daughter’s husband was not so ready 
to accept the mother’s explanation of the circum- 
stances. He said: ‘‘Instead of auguring that we 
will always have full and plenty and that we will 
always be willing and able to help others, I think 
it shows that the servants about the place are any- 
thing but careful and trustworthy. If I have a 
similar experience in my own home, I shall dis- 
charge the whole company forthwith. With such 
servants one’s safety and comfort are in jeopardy. 
But let us dismiss the matter.” 

Mrs. DeLisle was all too glad to “dismiss the 

9 


130 THE MAEEIAGE SUPPER AND PRODIGAL. 

matter’^ and judging from the relieved expression 
which came to her husband’s face, he must have 
been equally glad. The bride possessed much of 
her father’s determination and her mother’s 
splendid physical organism, but she was not as 
able in mastering her feelings on this occasion as 
her parents. 

Not more than one-half of the guests had seen 
the strange intruder, but those who had seen him 
now told their neighbors, and so the information 
passed from guest to guest. The fact that Mrs. 
DeLisle had actually left her place and gone to the 
tramp-like fellow and accompanied him when he 
left the room, was the strangest and most unac- 
countable part of the entire occurrence. The place 
at the table at which the family sat had been the 
center of attraction all the evening ; but now it be- 
gan to be the center of inquisitorial gaze which 
could not be disguised. The DeLisles felt con- 
scious of it, although they professed not to look 
up. Mrs. DeLisle more than once debated in her 
own mind whether she herself should not get up 
and give an explanation of her own conduct in go- 
ing to the stranger and in accompanying him from 
the banquet hall. She could not consult her hus- 
band without exciting suspicion, and she was 
afraid to attempt an explanation without his con- 
sent. 

The enjoyment of the feast was marred by what 
had occurred. There was now only one theme upon 


THE MAKEIAGE SUPPEE AND PEODIGAL. 131 


which the thoughts of all were centered. Conver- 
sation lagged. The music continued but was un- 
appreciated because it was unheard. The menu 
was such as could not fail to delight an epicure, 
but it might almost have consisted of the most 
ordinary viands, because those who ate tasted lit- 
tle of the quality of the food. The guests separated 
soon after midnight. They observed the usual 
courtesies, but in spite of their wishes, they were 
unnatural and formal. 

When Dr. Knowit took his coach to be taken to 
his home another incident strangely in keeping 
with what had already taken place occurred. A wo- 
man thinly clad and carrying a child wrapped in an 
old shawl stood at the curb. Just as the Eev. Doc- 
tor passed her the rose which he had worn all the 
evening, dropped to the pavement. The woman 
eagerly snatched it, and pressing it to her heart, 
hurried away with her child. She had not gone 
far before a worker in the home of which Miss 
Dolent was the head, met the woman and asked 
her to come with her to the home. The woman 
with the child walked away with her new found 
friend without asking a question or speaking a 
word. They had not gone far before the woman 
uttered a little moan and sank to the pavement. 
Her companion summoned a coupe, she was lifted 
into the vehicle with her child, the door was closed 
and the woman and the child were rapidly driven 
toward Talitha Cumi. 


CHAPTEE X. 



Three days after the marriage of Miss DeLisle 
her mother sent a messenger to Dr. Emowit who 
sat in his study deeply absorbed in a book on 
‘^Eeasons for believing that there were two 
Isaiahs.’’ The messenger handed the Doctor a note 
which was as significant as it was brief. It read : 
‘‘Dear Pastor: — We are in deep sorrow. Mrs. 
DeLisle. ’ ’ 

The Doctor knitted his brows, re-read the note, 
folded it and returned it to its envelope. To the 
messenger who still stood waiting, he said “You 
may go.” Then he put on his great coat and pulled 
his hat firmly upon his head, and shortly was buf- 
feting the February blast on his way to the home 
of the DeLisles. As he had not far to go, he was 
soon ushered into the reception room, where he 
met Mrs. DeLisle. She grasped his hand, at the 
same time saying, “I want your advice.” 

Dr. Knowit noticed that her eyes were red with 
ri32) 


DIVINE UNTO AIE BY FAMILIAR SPIRIT. 133 


weeping, and her proud figure was bent with grief. 
Without paying any attention to her greeting, he 
said, ‘^Whatever may be the cause of your sorrow, 
let me assure you of my deepest sympathy.’’ 

She replied, ‘ ‘ The cause of our trouble is as deep 
as it is mysterious. You remember my daughter 
and her husband started for Florida the same 
night they were married. That was three days 
ago last night. This telegram I received yester- 
day. (Here she produced a telegram, and handed 
it to the Doctor). He read: Gregory is lost. 
Send father to me at once.” (Gregory, Sylvanus 
Gregory is the name of the daughter’s husband). 

Mrs. Gregory must have meant just what she 
said, for she was no girl that is needlessly 
alarmed. Mr. DeLisle felt this, so that it took lit- 
tle persuasion to induce him to start for Florida 
the same evening. The very afternoon on which 
she sent a messenger to Dr. Knowit, Mrs. DeLisle 
received a telegram which announced the fact that 
Mr. Gregory was not found. That there was no 
clue to the mystery, and that their daughter bore 
herself bravely. Mrs. DeLisle told Dr. Knowit 
the contents of this second telegram whilst she 
fumbled among her papers in search of the tele- 
gram itself. When she found it, she reassured the 
Doctor by handing it to him and permitting him to 
read for himself. The Doctor read the contents 
aloud, and before he could make any comments she 
turned her tearful eyes upon him, and asked, 


134 DIVINE UNTO ME BY FAMILIAB SPIKIT. 

‘^Doctor, what do you think could have happened? 
They were perfectly happy when they bade us 
good-bye. Mr. Gregory tenderly loved my daugh- 
er from the first, and she grew to love him as ten- 
derly as he loved her. 

Of course Dr. Emowit did not know what could 
have happened. He knew that whatever love Miss 
DeLisle had developed for her suitor was the child 
of necessity rather than the result of a sponta- 
neous, irresistible affinity. In fact Dr. K. at one 
time had some difficulty in concealing his feelings 
toward the young heiress. During the first few 
years of his pastorate he had almost constantly 
associated with Miss DeLisle, and when he saw 
that her father’s greed for wealth constrained his 
daughter’s affections, he nursed the wound in his 
heart alone. Now that she was the bride and per- 
haps the widow of another, he dreamed of a pos- 
sible future even as he waited for something to say 
for the comfort and help of her weeping mother. 

Before Dr. Kmowit was able to banish his 
thoughts of what might yet come to pass, or to 
form a reply to her mother’s questioning look, she 
herself told him that she had made up her mind to 
go that very evening, to the home of a celebrated 
medium, whom both she and Dr. Knowit knew well 
by reputation. She asked the Doctor whether he 
would accompany her. She told him that among 
all her friends he was the only one whom she had 
admitted into the secret of her sorrow, and that 


DIVINE UNTO ME BY FAMILIAR SPIRIT. 135 

she had done her utmost to conceal the state of her 
feelings from all who called at her home. 

Dr. Emowit readily consented to accompany her. 
For a few moments longer the two conversed. The 
Doctor trying his best to divert her from her sor- 
row; but she resolutely clung to it. It seemed to 
him as if she were constantly afraid that he might 
ask her concerning the man who had so uncere- 
moniously intruded himself upon the wedding sup- 
per. He also tried to account for the depths of 
her sorrow on this occasion because of that inci- 
dent and what it must have signified to them. 
Could the disappearance of Mr. Gregory be in any 
way connected with it? Dr. Knowit knew enough 
of human nature to realize that our sorrows are 
very much like streams of water in the earth. 
When enough of them combine they overflow every 
barrier and deluge our whole being in a flood of 
irresistible woe. After being convinced of the 
futility of every sally at conversation aside from 
what to Mrs. DeLisle seemed the all-absorbing 
topic, he bowed himself out, promising to be on 
hand promptly for the proposed interview with 
the consulter of shades. 

Promptly at eight therefore that evening, the 
Doctor and Mrs. DeLisle stood upon the front 
door-step of the famous medium. They strove to 
be the first, because they knew her to be much 
sought after by all who could afford the fees she 
required to move the dead. A servant ushered 


136 


DIVINE UNTO ME BY FAMILIAR SPIRIT. 


them to her private consulting rooms. She was 
clad in a rich gown which set off her physical 
charms most admirably. A diamond brooch glit- 
tered upon her throat, a large opal shone like a 
ray of moonlight from a ring in her shapely finger. 
She was most courteous and dignified in her greet- 
ing. Madam, I sympathize with you in your af- 
fiiction,’^ she said, addressing Mrs. DeLisle, ‘^and 
I think I can help you. Your friend here, the Doc- 
tor, must acknowledge that his theology offers no 
solution and little comfort in this case. Mine does. 
I think after this evening, both you, (addressing 
Dr. Knowit) and the lady here will think better 
of my cult which is winning an ever increasing 
number of devotees among the cultured and re- 
fined. And let me say that with each acquisition 
of numbers to our cult in this life there is a cor- 
responding acquisition of power from the spirit 
world. It seems to bring ‘principalities and pow- 
ers nearer to us.’ ” 

Dr. Knowit was compelled to admit that his 
religion offered no consolation in such a sorrow. 
This was because he had forgotten and failed to 
apply the promise the great Head of Christianity 
made through the prophet, when he said, “When 
thou passest through the waters I will be with 
thee ; and through the rivers, they shall not over- 
flow thee : when thou walkest through the fire thou 
shalt not be burned ; neither shall the flame kindle 
upon thee.” At the same time his conscience ac- 




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••CONSULTING THE MEDIUM.” — The Mother of the Bride Is Consulting the Medium in the Hope of 
Finding Her Lost Son-in-law. Mrs. Gregory Thinks the Head Coming Up Through the 
Floor Is the Head of Her Own Father’s Spirit. Chapter 10 Proves 

Her Mistaken. — Page 139. 




DIVINE UNTO ME BY FAMILIAE SPIRIT. 137 

cused him for doing that which fifty years before 
every Christian mmister would have been as much 
ashamed to do as he would have been despised for 
doing — consulting a witch, in the hour of extrem- 
ity and need instead of going to Him who said: 
‘‘Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of 
the world. Dr. Knowit still retained the husk of 
his religion, but the kernel, he, like most of his 
day, had lost. It was no wonder therefore, that 
‘‘his theology was broad enough to comprehend 
every cult which embraced in it God as the univer- 
sal father.’^ 

The woman who stood before them was anxious 
to make both of her visitors feel that she had 
something better than the church (so called) of- 
fered. In this attempt she was strengthened by 
a church which had turned away from him “who 
is the author and finisher of a faith that survives 
scattered fortunes, broken promises, severed 
friendships, and death itself. She told her visitors 
how she had been apprized of their coming by the 
spirit of Mrs. DeLisle’s father, and how he had 
volunteered to come that very evening to impart to 
his daughter the information she desired. She 
told them that she had no doubts in her own mind 
but that this spirit who must necessarily be inter- 
ested in the welfare of his daughter, would be true 
to his word, and unravel the secret cause of the 
disappearance of her daughter’s husband. 

Almost whilst she was in the act of delivering 


138 DIVINE UNTO ME BY FAMILIAR SPIRIT. 

the last part of this, her studied speech, she 
reached her hand out, pressed the button of an 
electric light, and all was darkness save where the 
rays of a distant arc light played in ghostly pencils 
upon the ceiling of the room. The medium became 
silent. Dr. Kmowit and Mrs. DeLisle either be- 
cause of what they expected, or because they were 
not strangers to a nameless fear which had some- 
how stolen upon them, also sat in silence opposite 
each other. In a moment after the light was ex- 
tinguished there was a loud creaking of the floor, 
then a yellowish glow appeared upon the rug in 
the center of the room. Next there appeared the 
top of a bald head upon which there was distinctly 
visible a lump about the size of a walnut; (Mrs. 
DeLisle ^s father had such a lump upon the top of 
his bald head at the time of his death), then the 
entire head was visible. The face which seemed 
to regard no one in particular, was a kindly look- 
ing one. It wore a closely cropped white beard. 
The eyes were blue. Dr. Kmowit regarded it 
closely and silently, and was sure he could detect 
in it an exact resemblance to the face of the wo- 
man whom he had brought to this strange and 
uncanny place. 

Mrs. DeLisle also recognized the head and face 
of her deceased father. In the intensity of her ex- 
citement, she rose from her seat as if to approach 
more closely the face before her ; but she fell back 
into her chair in a dead faint. Dr. Knowit made 


DIVINE UNTO ME BY FAMILIAR SPIRIT. 139 


no attempt to resuscitate her; for he felt his face 
suffused by a cold perspiration, and his limbs 
shake like an aspen. He kept regarding the benign 
face before him. Its chin seemed to rest upon the 
rug. Its lips parted and he heard or thought he 
heard it say, ^‘They will find his body in the 
lagoon.’^ Then the face immediately vanished. 

Dr. Knowit sat for a moment longer. He seemed 
unable to rise or make a sound ; but as soon as he 
was able, he began to feel for the button the 
medium had pressed what now seemed an age ago, 
but what was really only fifteen minutes. Just as 
he had found it and was beginning to recover him- 
self in the reassuring light, the medium arose 
from her chair in which she had during all this 
time been silently reclining as if asleep. She 
picked up a bottle of smelling salts in a matter of 
fact way, and without saying a word, applied it to 
the nostrils of Mrs. DeLisle who still sat uncon- 
scious in her chair. It required only a few mo- 
ments to restore her. Her first words were, ‘ ‘ My 
father! Where is he?’’ Looking upon the spot 
where she had so lately seen his face, and seeing 
nothing of the apparition, she requested to be re- 
moved to her home immediately. 

The Madame, as she was in the habit of having 
herself called, summoned a cab by the ’phone 
which stood upon the desk of her den. Mrs. De- 
Lisle resumed her beaver and hat of which at her 
coming she had divested herself. In a few mo- 


140 DIVINE UNTO ME BY FAMILIAR SPIRIT. 

ments more they took their leave, but not before 
Dr. Knowit had pressed a gold eagle into the palm 
of Madame ; for this was her stipulated fee. When 
the Dr. slipped the eagle into her hand, the Ma- 
dame asked, ‘‘Are you convinced He replied 
“Certainly.^’ 

On the way home the Doctor told Mrs. DeLisle 
what he had heard from the lips of the apparition. 
Mrs. DeLisle had no doubts in her mind, but that 
she had seen the face of her father, and she be- 
lieved every word of the message it had spoken. 
That very night she wired the message to her hus- 
band who was still searching for a clue to the 
mysterious disappearance of his son-in-law. 

“For this cause God sendeth them a working of 
error, that they should believe a lie ; that they all 
might be judged who believe not the truth, but had 
pleasure in unrighteousness.’’ 


CHAPTER XI. 


‘‘A LITTLE CHILD 

SHALL LEAD THEM " 


It was after one o ^clock in the morning when the 
mission worker, Miss Susie Blakie, arrived in the 
home, Talitha Cumi, with her ward, the woman 
who so eagerly snatched the rose which fell from 
the coat lapel of Dr. Knowit, the night of the De- 
Lisle wedding. The babe which the mother kept 
wrapped in the old shawl, seemed to be sleeping 
soundly, although with the jolting of the vehicle in 
which they were riding, its breathing was not dis- 
cernable. The mother still held the rose in her 
cold, blue hand. She explained her fondness for 
the rose by saying that she had not seen a rose for 
a long time, and that she had always loved roses 
whilst still an innocent child in her country home. 
With this explanation she burst into tears, and 
Miss Blakie taking her own handkerchief wiped 
her sad pale face, saying as she did so, ‘‘There 
now, dearie, do not speak about it, if it gives you 
pain.’’ 


( 141 ) 


142 


A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM. 


When they arrived at the Home the stranger 
was asked to step into a bath room. This was re- 
quired of every new arrival. Clean garments were 
awaiting the stranger in the bath to which she was 
shown. The great tears welled up in her large 
blue eyes as she looked at the clean, comfortable 
surroundings ; but Miss Blakie who brought her to 
the room retired immediately, well knowing that 
the poor girl would be overcome by her emotions. 
When she emerged from the bath she was given a 
cup of hot coffee and a sandwich, and after eating 
she was shown to a bed in a room in which there 
were twenty other beds exactly like the one in 
which she was invited to sleep. At the same time 
she was told that her baby would be cared for by 
others until morning, as it was necessary for her 
comfort that her rest be undisturbed. 

The real reason she did not receive the babe was 
that the nurse who took it out of her arms when 
she first arrived, found, on unwrapping it from 
the shawl, that it was dead. The coroner who ex- 
amined the case, said that it had died from lack 
of nourishment and from exposure to the cold. 
Evidently the mother and child had suffered much 
from the mother’s own account at the inquest. 

Before the inquest, and in fact the first question 
the mother asked in the morning, was concerning 
her babe. She was told that she would be taken to 
see it after breakfast. After her meal was finished, 
of which she took almost voraciously, she was 


A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM. 


143 


told that her little one had passed beyond the need 
of earthly care. Then she was led into the room 
where her darling lay, in a plain mnslin lined pine 
cofl&n. The babe itself had on a plain white muslin 
slip. Its little hands were folded about a white 
carnation, many dozen of which flowers had very 
early that morning been brought by the janitor of 
the Home from the house of the DeLisles. 

In this respect the DeLisles were one in a thou- 
sand. They always sent their used flowers to the 
mission, to gladden the hearts of the poor, fallen 
creatures who so much needed the stimulus which 
always comes from the beauty and purity of flow- 
ers, and which so eloquently appeal to humanity 
for that which is pure and right and good. 

It is needless to say that the grief of the young 
mother as she looked upon her child so still and 
cold, was just as heart-rending as if she had been 
more fortunate in providing for it. The poor love 
just as tenderly as do the rich and affluent. He 
who unseals the fountains of affection in the mil- 
lionaire mother ^s heart, also touches the springs 
of the slum mother’s love. Because the former 
reposes upon snowy pillows and a downy couch is 
no evidence that the stream of her love flows fuller 
or deeper. The perfection of the wild rose is not 
marred because it blooms on the edge of a bog. It 
is just as pure and sweet in its being as the rose 
that grows in the atmosphere of the conservatory. 
It certainly is more able to withstand the chilly 


144 


A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM. 


air and the storm than its more fortunate neigh- 
bor. Because the wild rose must bloom on the edge 
of the bog and seem to be a part of it does not in 
the least contaminate it. 

Nature dropped the rose there when it was still 
a seed, not to make it less beautiful or to humiliate 
it, but rather to brighten and cheer, and make 
glorious even, all other life in and about the bog. 
It makes it much harder for a human life to main- 
tain its integrity grown by the side of a moral bog, 
than for the rose to preserve its purity growing 
in nature’s waste places, but there are many lives 
which develop all the Christian graces among the 
very dregs of human society. It is these lives that 
make human environment fragrant with the at- 
mosphere of the heaven into which they are grow- 
ing. 

Miss Dolent, with whom we have so often met, 
soon found that the young mother had been living 
a pure life whatever were her social surroundings. 
She learned too that she had been associated for 
several years at least, with those who would have 
dragged her down to the low level of their own 
being. 

The buoy set to guide the ship on its way to and 
from its home port can be so heavily weighted 
that it is compelled to sink beneath the surface of 
the waves when the tempest howls and shrieks on 
sea and sail, and the ship the buoy was set to guide 
may in consequence be lost on the shoals and 


A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM. 


145 


rocks; but He who placed life-buoys on lifers sea 
never permits them to be weighted too heavily, -so 
that his purposes are thwarted. So long as a 
human life commits itself to his guardian care and 
keeping it is safe. How many lives have been 
saved by those virtuous souls who keep above the 
dark flood of sin over which they float, eternity 
alone will reveal. 

Grace Dolent was such a life. Not only the 
poor creatures which she caught as the flotsam 
from the dark stream of vice rushing at flood-tide 
over the precipice of life’s disasters into the whirl- 
pool of eternal destruction, but also those who 
passed along the bank, and who watched with idle 
curiosity as the human wreckage helplessly tossed 
on the bosom of the fearful stream, she helped and 
for them made life worth the living. 

What the young mother told Grace Dolent as 
they stood beside the bier of the little one and 
mingled their tears on the white muslin shroud of 
the baby, that first morning of their acquaintance, 
cannot now be told. Both felt sure as they stood 
there that they needed each the other, to make 
their life holier and stronger, stronger because 
holier. 

Grace Dolent made as few bosom friends among 
the lowly as among the higher in life. It was not 
because she was unable to attract. Her charms 
of person were only second to the nobler qualities 
of her head and heart. It is true the circle of her 
10 


146 


A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM. 


friends constantly enlarged with the days of her 
service, but she walked as one among the blossoms, 
she delighted in their presence but seldom raised 
herself from her work to press one to her heart, 
or wear a cluster on her bosom. Her life was 
neither solitary or unhappy, though she spent 
most of her days in service, and seldom did that 
which the best of her day considered so essential 
to their welfare. 

We relate these incidents and dwell upon the 
sweet character of Grace Dolent because we wish 
the reader to know that in the times which we are 
describing there were still noble lives, the very 
salt of the earth which gave the world its savor 
and made it worth while for the Almighty to con- 
tinue the race. There were apostles of faith as 
well as devotees to greed and lust. 

For the present at least we must leave the wo- 
man, our new acquaintance within the halls of 
Talitha Cumi. Meanwhile let us assure the reader 
that she has a history. The gem that men tread 
under foot unnoticed and unknown may have just 
as bright a luster, as great a worth, and as won- 
derful a history as the gem that glitters in the 
diadem of royalty. 


CHAPTEE XII. 



Even when the nations of the earth, none of 
them, are at war, there may be crises in their af- 
fairs. It is really not their growth in wealth or 
their territorial expansion that may bring them 
into complications with other nations. It is their 
decline in moral and spiritual worth which in the 
end must precipitate affairs. Most of the nations 
of antiquity have died by suicide, and where it was 
not actual suicide, it was their own hands which 
sharpened the blade for the executioner and placed 
it within his grasp. Even when the sun shines and 
the wheels of prosperity move forward and the na- 
tions are at peace, there are crises so awful in in- 
dividual lives, that they touch the very throne of 
God and bring angels to the rescue. 

One might suppose that in describing the times 
in which our characters move, there would be the 
constant recurrence of calamities, but such is not 
the case. There are as we have seen, whole years 
( 147 ) 


148 


PERPLEXED. 


during which there are no overwhelming catastro- 
phies. The surprise is that when calamities come 
to nations or to individuals, persons are unwilling 
to recognize a superhuman agency ordering and 
controlling them. And yet has it not ever been 
so? Few realize that their lives are really the his- 
tory of supernatural inventions, much less that 
the great Father ‘‘plants his footsteps in ‘every 
sea’ and ‘rides upon every storm.’ ” The truth 
of the whole matter is, there is nothing common- 
place in the life of the individual or the nation. 
Each is a link in the chain of God’s or the devil’s 
making. Each act may shape a destiny. 

We parted with Dr. Knowit and Mrs. DeLisle 
just after the former had telephoned a message to 
the Western Union for Mr. DeLisle in Florida. 
We know already the import of that message. Mr. 
DeLisle received the telegram just as he was re- 
turning to his daughter at the hotel from a visit 
to a detective agency. The superintendent had 
listened carefully to DeLisle ’s story of how the 
day after the arrival of his daughter and her hus- 
band the latter had told his wife that he would 
walk out for an hour alone because his wife had 
some little matters to attend to and could not ac- 
company him; and how from that time forth no 
one so far as his friends could learn, had seen 
Gregory alive or dead. The detective after listen- 
ing to the story and asking a number of questions, 
some of which were intensely personal, refused to 


PEKPLEXED. 


149 


give an opinion in the case; but received Mr. De- 
Lisle retaining fee, and promised to go to work 
on the case immediately. It was therefore quite 
natural for Mr. DeLisle to read and re-read the 
telegram received from his wife, and then to turn 
and quickly retrace his footsteps to the office of 
the superintendent of the agency and lay the tele- 
gram before him. He did not even pause to say 
a word to his daughter that he had heard from 
her mother. In this he acted wisely, for such 
news as the message contained, could not in the 
least have added to her equanimity. 

The superintendent read the telegram and then 
after a moment ^s thought said, ‘‘We have fre- 
quently employed the help of persons such as your 
wife describes in her dispatch, but not in a single 
case have we found what they say to be exactly 
true. In some instances they have so far misled 
us as to cause us to fail utterly so long as we fol- 
lowed their instructions. In other cases they have 
told us half truths, which I am sure they could 
not have guessed. They know something; but I 
am convinced that where they are in communica- 
tion with spirits, they are in communication with 
devils, blue as sulphur can make them, and liars 
as great as their common father, the devil; how- 
ever we will see what of truth or falsehood there 
is in this message. The lagoon referred to is the 
one a mile from the hotel at which you are stop- 
ping, and the only one within miles. So there can 


150 


PERPLEXED. 


be no mistake as to the one meant. It is a small 
one, and not very deep. I think we can get a half 
dozen men to drag it in an hour’s time and at 
small expense. In case we find the body we will 
hand you back your retainer with instructions to 
give it to the medium. ’ ’ 

He smiled when he made this latter remark. 
Mrs. Gregory met her father when he returned to 
the hotel. She told him that she had resolved to 
return to New York. Here she was compelled to 
live the life of a recluse, or be stared out of 
countenance whenever she showed herself outside 
of her room. She argued that she could be no 
help in the quest, and that if her husband were 
found dead or alive he could be brought to New 
York. 

We have already said something of the char- 
acter of Miss DeLisle. There is no reason for be- 
lieving that she did not care for the man she mar- 
ried, although he was her senior by twenty years ; 
but that she loved him as ardently as she could 
have loved a man nearer her own age and with her 
likes and dislikes we do not affirm. 

Early the next morning six men in two boats, 
dragging a net between them, rowed from side to 
side on the lagoon. On the shore stood the super- 
intendent of the detective agency and Mr. DeLisle. 
In about three hours their work was completed. 
They found no trace of the missing Gregory. They 
found what they were not searching for — the 


PERPLEXED. 


151 


bodies of two infants which had been weighted to 
the bottom of the lake by having stones tied to 
them. It was an evidence that the people in that 
town, or at last people who had once been in that 
place, were not too good to commit the foulest 
crimes. Very little attention was paid to what 
was found. ^Vhen Mr. DeLisle and the detective 
separated, the latter promised to leave no stone 
unturned in his endeavors to find what could be 
learned about the sudden and mysterious disap- 
pearance of Mr. Gregory. Of one thing both men 
were convinced more firmly than ever, namely, 
that if the medium knew anything, it was certain 
that she did not know the truth. 

When Mr. DeLisle returned to the hotel he found 
his daughter ready for her journey home. She 
argued that she could at least comfort her mother 
whom she knew to be worrying over her daugh- 
ter’s grief. It is characteristic of human nature 
that we are more mindful of the suffering of our 
friends than we are of our own when a deep sor- 
row comes to us. 

Mr. DeLisle now for the first time told his 
daughter concerning the telegram he had received 
from her mother. He told her also how he had 
acted on the suggestion of the message and with 
what results. She, on the other hand, told him 
that she had a letter from her mother which told 
all and more than the telegram contained. She 
continued : ‘‘I will tell you now what may surprise 


152 


PERPLEXED. 


you quite as much as it did me. She told me in 
her letter that Grace Dolent, the matron of the 
Home, had been to see her, and that in the course 
of their conversation she told mother that she was 
surprised to learn that we had so soon returned 
from our wedding trip. When mother said that 
we had not returned, she said she was sure that 
she had seen Mr. Gregory come out of his office 
that very afternoon. She was sure that it was he, 
for he had lifted his hat to her. She was impressed 
with his appearance which was that of a man who 
had just arisen from a bed of sickness. When 
mother told her that it could not have been he, she 
replied that it must have been his ghost. ’ ’ 

^^You know, father, said Mrs. Gregory,^’ 

Grace is too well acquainted with Mr. Gregory 
to be mistaken. She has frequently seen him with 
me at church, and several times she met him at 
our house when she came there in the interests 
of her work.’’ 

Mr. DeLisle gazed at his daughter in open- 
mouthed wonder, whilst she rehearsed to him the 
contents of her mother’s letter. After she had 
finished and seemed waiting for him to say some- 
thing, he sat in silence for several minutes. He 
was a man who thought well before he spoke. At 
length he said: ‘^Daughter, it is all a mistake. 
Grace Dolent did not see Mr. Gregory. It cannot 
be that he is in New York. He is no where in this 
world where he can communicate with us. I know 


PERPLEXED. 


153 


him thoroughly, and I know his affection for you. 
He would not be willing to live a day without let- 
ting us know of his whereabouts, or immediately 
coming to us. You go home as you have deter- 
mined. I will remain a day or two longer. You 
can take the express which leaves this place this 
evening at six. I will make arrangements for your 
accommodation in a drawing room. It may be dif- 
ficult for me to get a drawing room at this late 
hour, but nevertheless, at this season when the 
flow of passengers is from, rather than to the 
North, I think I can manage it.’^ 

That evening when Mrs. Gregory stepped on 
board the train for New York, Mr. DeLisle wired 
her mother that their daughter was on her way 
home. It is not in the power of this narrative to 
portray the consternation and anguish which filled 
the hearts of Mr. and Mrs. DeLisle when three 
days afterwards the father arrived at home and 
learned that his daughter never reached her des- 
tination. A number of telegrams had been sent to 
him by his wife, but either because of some one^s 
carelessness or indifference, these never reached 
him. Up to this time the mother still hoped that 
her daughter had at the last moment postponed 
her home coming so as to go with her father ; but 
now this hope was blasted, and the keenest anguish 
filled her heart. • At once every effort was made to 
solve this new mystery. All that was learned 
within a week after her loss was that she had step- 


154 


ped off the train when in a certain town, it had 
been delayed for half an hour on account of a 
broken engine, and when the train again pulled 
out she had not returned. The conductor did not 
find this out until several hours afterward, and 
then he gave himself no concern, because he 
thought it was a simple case of ^‘left over,’’ and 
so telegraphed the agent in the town to put her on 
board the next express. Inasmuch as he did not 
hear from the agent he had thought that all was 
right, and made his report accordingly. 



CHAPTER XIII. 


“He Doeth Great Wonders.” 


Mrs. DeLisle had many things to harass her life 
in those days. In addition to the worry and sor- 
row incident to the loss of her daughter, Mrs. 
Gregory, Mrs. DeLisle had many burdens to bear. 
Her husband was a constant source of worry and 
annoyance to her. After he returned from his 
trip South, in search of Mr. Gregory, he developed 
rheumatism and became a great sufferer. He was 
confined to his home during the remainder of the 
winter and spring. His physicians tried every 
Imown remedy, but without much relief and with 
no prospect effecting a permanent cure. 

Now Mr. DeLisle had a friend who was an 
avowed believer in Christian Science. From the 
very first this friend recommended a Christian 
Science practitioner, but Mr. DeLisle scouted the 
idea. After he had suffered what to him seemed 
excruciating pain, he consented to have his coach- 
man take him to visit the sumptuous offices of the 
aforesaid Christian Science practitioner. 

( 155 ) 


156 


HE DOETH GREAT WONDERS. 


Mr. DeLisle presented a rather grotesque ap- 
pearance as he hobbled down his spacious sand- 
stone steps, muffled in a fur coat and leaning his 
weight upon his crutches. After a half hour’s 
gentle and most careful driving, he arrived at the 
parlors of the Christian Scientist doctor. The lat- 
ter was busily reading the morning papers as Mr. 
DeLisle laboriously hobbled into the room. The 
practitioner without apparently lifting his eyes 
from the paper accosted DeLisle by asking, ‘‘Well, 
man, what do you mean by hobbling in here on 
two crutches when you ought to be walking on 
both your feet? Why is your face puckered and 
drawn, when, on this beautiful March morning, 
you ought to be happy and wreathed in smiles? 
What do you think is the matter with you, any- 
how?” 

Mr. DeLisle replied with asperity and in short 
jerky sentences to the series of questions the prac- 
titioner had leveled at him. 

The practitioner continued: “If you realized 
that your pain is only a figment of your imagina- 
tion, superinduced by your excessive nutrition — if 
you would try to be cheerful and get your thoughts 
away from what seems to you the swollen condi- 
tion of your limb and foot, your supposed pain 
would be a delightful oblivion. You were no doubt 
reared in an old-fashioned so called Christian at- 
mosphere which means a condition brought about 
by antiquated Christian thought. You will, there- 


HE DOETH GREAT WONDERS. 


157 


fore, believe what Bishop Taylor says about cheer- 
fulness : ^ Cheerfulness and a festival spirit fill the 
soul full of harmony; it composes music for 
churches and hearts ; it makes and publishes glori- 
fications for God; it produces thankfulness and 
serves the end of charity; and, when the oil of 
gladness runs over, it makes bright and tall emis- 
sions of light and holy fires, reaching up to a cloud 
making joy round about; and, therefore, since it 
is so innocent and may be so pious and full of holy 
advantages whatsoever can so innocently minister 
to this holy joy does set forth the work of religion 
and charity.’ ” 

‘‘You allow your life to become sour and you 
darken the sunlight of good cheer in the lives of 
others. Come ! My man, throw away your 
crutches and assert yourself. ’ ’ 

Just then Mr. DeLisle made up his mind to as- 
sert himself, being in no mood to listen to a homily 
on cheerfulness, so he tried to balance himself on 
one crutch in order to use the other on the Chris- 
tian Scientist, but he was swarted in this attempt 
by a twinge of pain and instead spun around on 
his well leg and fell back heavily into a big chair. 

The practitioner saw the afflicted man’s attempt 
at striking and saw also his discomfiture so he 
laughed heartily, which still farther incensed Mr. 
DeLisle. Then the practitioner arose and re- 
garded his patient with a quizzical air. Finally he 
said, “I suppose you think you have rheuma- 
tism.” 


158 


HE DOETH GREAT WONDERS. 


^ ‘ Think I have, you scoundrel ! If you had suf- 
fered half the agony I have endured the last 
month, you would not mock my helplessness. If 
I could reach you I would beat you over the head 
with this crutch till I would crush your empty 
skull like an egg shell. 

After this explosion of impotent wrath, De- 
Lisle ^s face glowed like fire and his breath came 
in short, hot putfs which prevented him saying 
another word, but he stared with flaming eyes at 
the face of the quack before him who at first let on 
as if he considered the situation too droll and 
mirth provoking to admit of serious comment. 
Finally he said, “Please don’t be so violent.” 
Then as if in fear of his life, he backed toward a 
closed door without once allowing his eye to won- 
der from the face of his irate sufferer. He dis- 
appeared through the door and closed it. A 
moment thereafter DeLisle felt his chair rock 
whilst a door he had not before noticed, swung 
wide open and a sheet of flame burst forth. The 
walls of the room crackled and Mr. DeLisle ex- 
perienced sensations as if his body were pricked 
by a thousand needles. He leaped from his chair 
with a cry of terror and rushed for the door ut- 
terly unmindful of his crutches. The practitioner 
intercepted him before he succeeded in reaching 
the street and in the blandest tone said: “Did I 
not tell you you imagined you could not walk? 
Why you leaped like a March hare. I could not 


HE DOETH GREAT WONDERS. 


159 


have done better myself. Come ! Sit down ! There 
is no cause for alarm. You are safe. Let me tell 
you something. 

Mr. DeLisle permitted himself in a half dazed 
way as if he were not conscious of himself, to be 
led back to his chair; and the practitioner, in a 
few well chosen words told him to have confidence 
in himself, ‘‘All pain is imagination. The influence 
of our physical parts are figments of a disordered 
brain and really do not exist. ’ ’ To prove the truth 
of what he said he bound an amulet about his neck, 
which, with dapper fingers, he concealed beneath 
Mr. DeLisle ’s clothing, permitting it to rest upon 
his bare skin. “Go home,’’ said he, “Have con- 
fidence in yourself and don’t come to me again in 
the way you did half an hour ago.” 

We confess right here that DeLisle walked to 
his cab leaving his crutches with the practitioner. 
His footman hurled himself from his seat wholly 
surprised at his master’s coming, at a fairly rapid 
stride, toward the door of his cab. He tried to help 
him to the cushions within but the latter waved 
him aside and stepped into the coach without his 
aid. The Christian Science practitioner stood in- 
side the plate glass of his own door wearing a 
studied, but most amicable expression. 

Mr. DeLisle ordered his man to drive him to the 
park. He determined to be cheerful, and he felt 
now that his pain was gone, and he could enjoy a 
ride through the park and drive to his home at his 


160 


HE DOETH GKEAT WONDERS. 


leisure. When after an bourns drive he arrived 
in front of his mansion, Mrs. DeLisle was sur- 
prised beyond measure at seeing him walk from 
the carriage across the sidewalk and nimbly as- 
cend the steps to his home. 

That night at his club he was an ardent advocate 
of Christian Science. He told those who gathered 
about him that here was a religion which did not 
make monks out of men any more than it drove 
them to distraction with dreams and visions of 
eternal punishment. He said he would not again 
consult a doctor as long as he lived. He believed 
he had learned more philosophy and caught more 
of the spirit of true religion in one hour in the 
Christian Scientist’s parlor than all the preach- 
ers had taught him in his lifetime. 

The friend who had first directed him to the 
Christian Scientist was present at the club. He 
rubbed his fat palms with satisfaction as he lis- 
tened to DeLisle ’s experience with the Scientist. 
‘ ‘ I told you he could help you or rather teach you 
how to help yourself,” he said. The others stood 
about him saying little and asking few questions. 
They all knew that DeLisle had been suffering 
with rheumatism. Only yesterday his limb was 
swollen and his unshod foot wrapped in bandages. 
They had heard of such and more marvelous cures 
before. ‘‘What was his fee?” DeLisle had not 
asked about it — ^had not thought of a fee in fact. 
He would attend to that matter in the morning 


HE DOETH GREAT WONDERS. 


161 


and he did. He sent him a fee, such as dilated the 
eyes of the practitioner, although he was accus- 
tomed to receive big fees, because he asked them 
usually, or did not exact them, when, as in this 
case, it was more to his purpose to wait. So He- 
Lisle was cured of his rheumatism but it was not 
long before a worse evil befell him which was 
wholly beyond the skill of the Scientist. 




11 


CHAPTEE XIV. 


@ “Mzuiy Shall Come In My Name © 

© © 

® And Shall Deceive Many.” © 

© © 

^©©©©©©®@®©@@®©©©©®©®©©©^ 


When Mrs. DeLisle heard from her husband 
lips how he had been suddenly cured of his rheu- 
matism in the parlors of the Christian Scientist 
she believed that she had a demonstration of the 
marvelous powers of Christian Science in the per- 
son of her ovm husband. She had heard much of 
its teaching and had seen those who professed to 
have been cured; but never before had the system 
appealed to her so forcibly as now. Her husband 
had suffered, she well knew. She saw too that he 
now discontinued his crutches, in fact no longer 
possessed them. She resolved to have a talk with 
Grace Dolent on the subject. She felt that Grace 
would either embrace the doctrine after she heard 
of Mr. DeLisle ’s cure, or she would give a good 
reason. She resolved to go to see her. 

A few days after Mrs. DeLisle had made up her 
mind to go to see Miss Dolent a Christian Science 
teacher called to see her. He had a long ‘‘heart to 
(162) 


MANY SHALL COME IN MY NAME, 163 

heart talk, as he called it, with Mrs. DeLisle and 
he felt that he had made her his most ardent dis- 
ciple; but just as he was about to leave Mrs. De- 
Lisle, she said, she had a friend in the house of 
Talitha Cumi to whom she would speak and tell 
her all the marvelous things to which she had lis- 
tened from so cultured a gentleman. Her friend 
had a deep insight into the Scriptures and Mrs. 
DeLisle wondered why this, her spiritually-miuded 
friend, had not embraced or at least said some- 
thing to her about the marvelous doctrines and 
cures of Christian Science. She felt that now that 
Mr. DeLisle was cured, her friend would readily 
be convinced of the truth of the doctrine and would 
herself become a convert. 

The Christian Science teacher was too clever to 
allow a person so dull in perception, so inapt in 
expression to attempt to make a convert of one so 
deeply versed in Scripture and so well acquainted 
with human nature. He resolved that at all buz- 
zards he must see Grace Dolent and explain the 
doctrines and recount to her the marvelous cures 
of Christian Science. So he asked Mrs. DeLisle 
to wait a few days until after he had had a visit 
with Grace Dolent. 

The same day he presented himself at the doors 
of Talitha Cumi. 

For one to assert that the home for the fallen 
whom Grace Dolent tried to win back to paths of 
purity, could shut its doors against care and sor- 


164 


MANY SHALL COME IN MY NAME. 


row would be asserting what the most credulous 
know to be untrue. Grace herself recognized that 
sorrow and suffering although they wear the black 
cowl and fly with leaden wings are nevertheless 
God’s ministering angels; though our nature 
shrinks from them they are nevertheless permit- 
ted to come in order that they may widen the 
soul’s sympathies and strengthen its noblest im- 
pulses. 

She believed the Apostles’ injunction, ‘^Eejoice 
in the Lord always ; ’ ’ but when sorrow came, as it 
did so often, because of those whom she sheltered 
and because of the atmosphere in which she lived, 
she recognized that sorrow is the servant of joy 
because it prepares the soul to enter into everlast- 
ing joy prepared by God for them that overcome. 
She used to tell the women that whilst they served 
the flesh, their joys were like lightning, bright and 
dazzling, but killing; the joys they now sought 
were like the sun-light, bright, life-giving, beauti- 
ful, enduring. 

Of all true believers in her day no one believed 
more thoroughly in the Old and New Testament 
miracles than she. She believed also that God 
hears and answers prayer in behalf of the sick. 
She had tried Him too often to doubt His power 
and willingness to help ; but she permitted the at- 
tendance of physicians in the Home and she her- 
self took the medicine. She also believed that the 
mind has power over the body and that the imag- 


MANY SHALL COME IN MY NAME. 


165 


ination has much to do with our physical condi- 
tions ; but withal she was unwilling to believe that 
because a cult claims the ability to work miracles, 
therefore, it must necessarily be entitled to con- 
fidence. 

Christian Science, which for many decades num- 
bered among its devotees learned and highly cul- 
tured people, many of whom had once been mem- 
bers in Christian churches, and which had erected 
costly and imposing buildings by the hundred was 
nevertheless denying the only means of salvation 
— the power of the blood of Christ. The fact that 
this so-called church numbered its votaries by the 
millions and still seemed to be growing by leaps 
and bounds did not in the least impress her as be- 
ing true. She recognized too that the chief reason 
for the rapid growth of Christian Science lay in 
its claim to have discovered the laws through the 
operation of which Jesus did His miracles; and m 
this very boast she recognized that Christian 
Science tries to rob Christ of His claims as God 
manifest in the flesh. She knew that from the be- 
ginning the authoress and high priestess of Chris- 
tian Science was a crafty woman by the name of 
Mrs. Eddy and the foundation of their faith, the 
book written by her and entitled, ‘‘Science and 
Health and Key to the Scriptures,'' was a contra- 
diction and deception. She well knew how from 
time to time the contradictory teachings of this 
volume had been expounded and multiplied to suit 
the convenience of the advocates of the cult. 


166 


MANY SHALL COME IN MY NAME. 


Right here permit us to. say, the book ‘‘Science 
and Health with Key to the Scriptures ’ ^ claims to 
be an exposition of the body and yet it contradicts 
the fundamental truth of the Scripture. Let us 
demonstrate this statement: — whilst Moses as- 
serts (Gen. 1:1), “God created the heavens and 
the earth,’’ Christian Science says, “That spirit 
created matter is erroneous, pernicious,” (p. 15). 
The Scriptures say, ‘ ‘ God created man in his own 
image,” (Gen. 1 :27) ; but this “Key to the Scrip- 
ture” (?) says (p. 23), “Mortals are not created 
in the image of God. ’ ’ 

The Bible says (Gen. 2:27) “The Lord formed 
man of the dust of the Earth” but this wonderful 
Key of Christian Science asserts (p. 27) “Adam 
is a product of nothing,” “and unreality,” “Ma- 
terial bodies and material men are delusions. ’ ’ 

Of the founder of Christianity, born in Bethle- 
hem, subject to His parents in Nazareth, baptized 
in the Jordan, teacher and miracle worker in 
Galilee and Judea, God sacrificed for the sins of 
the world — of Him who “was manifest in the flesh, 
justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached 
unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, re- 
ceived into glory” — of Him this “Wonderful Key 
to the Scripture” says: “Christ is a Divine prin- 
ciple not a person, soul outside the body,” (p. 
530). “Jesus never ransomed men by paying 
their debts that sin incurs.” “Whosoever sins 
must suffer,” (p. 189). 


MANY SHALL COME IN MY NAME. 


167 


We have dwelt all too long upon our introduc- 
tion of Christian Science but we have done so in 
order that we may understand why Grace Dolent 
had no faith in the cult which was then as never 
before sweeping thousands into the maelstrom of 
perdition by its pretensions to superhuman 
power. She was, therefore, well prepared for Mr. 
DeLisle^s miracle worker who offered her and her 
home his support and council. He told her that 
whether she realized it or not, she was obeying 
many of the precepts of Christian Science ; and he 
knew that after she once understood the doctrines 
and saw the glorious works of his Science, she 
would be willing to modify her teachings with re- 
gard to Christ and His worship. She would re- 
lieve herself of much anxiety. She would dwell in 
the warmth and glow of a perfect love. The phy- 
sician would become a stranger within the walls 
of Talitha Cumi. Want and power would take to 
themselves wings. 

She replied that she could not embrace a cuk 
which was so manifestly a contradiction of the 
Bible. 

He said, it was because sh(^ did not understand 
her Bible and needed the ‘'Key to the Scriptures'’ 
to unlock its deeper truths. He said, “The Holy 
Spirit is divine Science, the development of eter- 
nal life in person," (p. 538, Key to the Scrip- 
tures), and not as she had been accustomed to re- 
gard it, a Divine personality. She said, “But how 


168 


MANY SHALL COME IN MY NAME. 


can you believe such a vagary when Christ Him- 
self says, ‘when He the spirit of truth is come He 
will guide you into all truth, ^ (John 16;13). “I 
look to that spirit now and He has been my guide 
for many years. He long since taught me that in 
the last times men would give heed to seducing 
spirits, ‘subverting the truth.’ You say, “as long 
as we believe that the soul can sin we can never 
understand the Science of being (page 38, Science 
and Health), and again you contradict yourselves 
by saying, “sin is not forgiven, we cannot escape 
its penalty,” (Vol. 2, p, 65, S. & H.), which of these 
two contradictory statements shall I believe I My 
Bible says ‘if we say we have no sin we deceive 
ourselves.’ ” 1st John 1:9:10. 

You say too, “Petitioning a personal Diety is a 
misapprehension of the source and means of all 
good and blessedness: therefore, it is not bene-t 
ficial.” My Bible says, “Pray without ceasing,” 
(I Thess. 5 :7 and Matt. 18 :19). “Verily I say unto 
you if two of you shall agree on earth as touching 
anything that they shall ask it shall be done for 
them of my Father which is in heaven. ” If I ac- 
cept your doctrine and pl*actice it, you would rob 
me of one of the dearest joys of my life and teach 
me to contradict my own spiritual consciousness 
and disobey my own eyes. ’ ’ 

So did Grace Dolent meet this Christian Scien- 
tist teacher and practitioner. As a last resort, 
this Christian Science teacher did what they al- 






• HAVE THE GATES OF HELL BEEN OPENtiD?” — This Picti he Shows How the Devie Whom Men and 
Women Have so Long Courted Now Makes His Appearance to Harass and Worry 

His Elect. Rev. 9:1-12. — Page 173. 



MANY SHALL COME IN MY NAME. 


1G9 


ways do — he appealed to their works. He pro- 
duced a printed list of testimonials, of where and 
how men and women had been healed of diseases, 
long standing and malignant. He asked, whether 
after doing all these great works, ^‘Christian 
Science was still to be condemned by bigoted 
priests and their bewitched and ignorant devo- 
tees.’’ 

Miss Dolent replied, that the Holy Spirit, the 
very existence of which, his Science denied, ages 
ago foreseen the Devil ’s cunning in which he would 
seek by apparent self-contradictions to prove 
himself an angel of light. Had not Christ him- 
self warned her, when he said (Mark 13:22) 
‘‘False Christs and false prophets shall arise and 
shall show signs and wonders to seduce if pos- 
sible, even the elect.” She said, the fact that a 
man worked miracles was no evidence that he was 
sent of God nor that he lived the truth. She be- 
lieved the time not far distant when he would ap- 
pear who “would do great wonders, so that he 
would make fire come down from heaven upon the 
earth in the sight of men.” 

When our Christian Scientist found that his 
bland manners, his learned sophistries, and his 
cunning explanations of the contradictions of Mrs. 
Eddy’s book were without avail to subvert the 
faith of this believer in the literal meaning of 
God’s Word and perceived, her power to puncture 
his fallacious teachings, he left her. He imme- 


170 


MANY SHALL COME IN MY NAME. 


diately repaired to the mansion of the DeLisle's 
and told Mrs. DeLisle that, in his opinion, it was 
best that she say nothing to Grace either about 
Christian Science doctrine nor what it had done 
for her husband. He felt sure he could best deal 
with her himself. The truth is, he knew he could 
not deal with her at all and he had made up his 
mind that he would lose faith in the cult himself 
if he would argue the matter any farther with her. 
He resolved never again to try. 


CHAPTER XV. 


m U 

“HAVE THE GATES OF HELL 
BEEN OPENED?” 

m 


At the time of the occurrence of the events of 
the last chapter a new calamity befell the inhab- 
itants of the earth, which was totally unlike any- 
thing described heretofore, in these chapters. Dur- 
ing the great earthquake in which every mountain 
and island seemed to have been moved out of their 
place, a great chasm was produced in the earth 
which seemed more like the crater of a volcano 
than a fissure of great extent. This chasm was 
in the plains near the city of Kome. What was 
strange about the chasm was the fact that for sev- 
eral years it remained precisely as nature had left 
it during the earthquake. No fire or smoke or 
lava issued out of its depths. It was many months 
before anyone ventured to approach it, because 
no one knew at what moment it might develop 
some new terror. By and by, as nature seemed 
to have subsided and things were as they once had 
( 171 ) 


172 HAVE THE GATES OF HELL BEEN OPENED. 

been, this chasm began to receive attention on the 
part of men of science and it became the subject 
of considerable speculation. Many attempts were 
, made to measure its depths, but all proved ab- 
ortive. Their speculations of what it might even- 
tually become were as numerous as they were 
futile in attempts at guessing the truth. 

One day in September when all nature seemed 
at rest, those living near the chasm, suddenly saw 
smoke issuing out of it. The smoke was dark as if 
composed of unburnt carbon. It seemed like a 
great pillar mounting higher and higher until its 
summit out-topped the highest distant Alpine 
peak. Then it began to unfold and spread its dark 
pinnacle until it covered the landscape for 
miles and miles and appeared like a dark 
cloud which constantly increased in volume 
until it embraced everything in its dark 
folds. The sun seemed now to shine dimly 
and appeared as when viewed through a smoked 
glass. Soon the dark, sulphurous smoke had wrap- 
ped the entire landscape in its somber folds. Even 
while men stood beholding, its pinions swept over 
them and embraced them in its darkness. Tele- 
grams first from all parts of Italy annoimced the 
fact that the sunny kingdom was enshrouded, and 
still the volumes seemed emerging out of the 
chasm in ever-increasing intensity. Vessels far 
out at sea endeavored to pierce its pall with the 
most powerful search light but the bosom of the 


HAVE THE GATES OF HELL BEEX OPENED. 173 

great deep was dark and forbidding as it must 
have been before the Spirit brooded on the waters. 
Vessels floated helplessly in the darkness or ad- 
vanced at half speed, unable to determine their 
position either from the sun by day or the stars by 
night. The magnetic needle, the ever faithful 
friend of the marine, seemed to pulsate and vacil- 
late as if undetermined what course to point. 

As was usual, the news of the terrifying phe- 
nomena were flashed over all the earth. The click of 
the instruments in thousands of oflSces all over the 
world was as the feeble pulsations of life in hearts 
that were almost dead with terror. The darkness 
crept over the world with the on-coming night, so 
that when it was time for the sun to rise in his 
glory and dispel the terrors of the darkness his 
face was shrouded in the universal gloom. 

Men’s hearts were filled with terror as they 
vainly speculated as to what might be the result 
of the terrifying phenomena. They had not long 
to wait, nor was there much time for speculation. 
From out the folds of the darkness and smoke 
there came terrifying shapes the like of which had 
never been seen on earth. They seemed a strange 
combination of the insect and mammal, of man 
and beast; but with it all they so strikingly re- 
sembled locusts that they were called devil locusts. 
Their bodies had very much the shape of a horse, 
but instead of a horse head they had the head of 
man, or rather of a woman — for they had long hair 


174 HAVE THE GATES OF HELL BEEN OPENED. 

about the demon-like human face — and they had 
wings like locusts. When they passed through the 
air they made a noise like the sound of horses and 
chariots moving swiftly to battle. Then almost 
instantly men would behold their horrid forms in 
the semi-darkness. 

Though these shapes resembled locusts they had 
few of the characteristics of locusts. Thus, for in- 
stance, they were never known to eat at all. The 
grass of the field and the leaf of the forest re- 
mained alike untouched by them. The object of 
their pursuit on the other hand, was humanity. 
The horrid shapes had teeth sharp and fierce as 
those of a lion, but strange as it may seem they 
did not bite. On the contrary, their tails which 
were like the tails of a scorpion, were the instru- 
ments with which they tormented humanity. With 
these they stung men and women. The result of 
their sting was never fatal ; but the pain resulting 
therefrom was so intense that those who were 
stung sought deliverance through death. But there 
was not even the possibility for suicide, for of all 
those stung not one died at his own hands. Those 
bitten would roll upon the floor and foam as if 
suffering from an attack of hydrophobia. Another 
characteristic was the inflammation which con- 
tinued for a long time after the first agonies, ren- 
dering the member afflicted useless. 

Never had there been a malady or rather a vis- 
itation so universal. It was not confined to one 


HAVE THE GATES OF HELL BEEN OPENED. 175 


country or continent, but the inhabitants of the 
whole earth suffered from the plague. Unlike 
locusts, they seemed most numerous in the city or 
rather where humanity was congregated in great- 
est numbers there these venomed creatures, or be- 
ings rather, for creatures they did not seem to 
be, were to be found in the greatest numbers. No 
door could be successfully barricaded against 
them, no brick wall was capable of excluding them. 
Day in and out there was a seemingly increasing 
number who suffered from their venomed sting. 
None of the terrible creatures seemed to die; none 
could be smitten or destroyed ; no weapon of earth 
seemed effectual against them. 

The result of all this terror was the stagnation 
of all business. It was as unsafe to buy as to sell, 
to consume in the home or abroad as it was to 
produce. Those who were not hurt knew neither 
the day nor the hour when they would become the 
victim of their sting, or at least be overcome at the 
sight of their terrifying appearance. As a rule 
people ventured as little as possible outside of 
their own homes. They preferred to languish in 
misery and hunger rather than to venture forth 
and incur the risk of being suddenly overcome and 
stung. Then too, their ravages seemed confined to 
the darkness of the night rather than the light. 
But the light of the day was by no means a guar- 
antee against them, for frequently and in many 
places the light at noon would become obscured 


176 HAVE THE GATES OF HELL BEEN OPENED. 

and from out the darkness the horrid shapes would 
become visible. Persons at such times would light 
their brightest lights and close their doors, but in 
spite of every precaution the venomed creatures 
or shapes rather, would appear and inspire their 
terror and inflict their awful sting, and then they 
would as suddenly disappear. At such time the 
cry of terror from the individual and from whole 
families would be heard by others, but beyond 
heralding the news that new victims were being 
added to the list in a town or community, the cry 
produced no response; for no human sympathy 
could induce the unattacked to sally forth to the 
aid of the attacked, and no human strength could 
turn aside the venom of the awful attack. 

Theaters and dancing halls for once, were de- 
serted, nor was the feast spread, nor did men es- 
say to dispel the terrors of those awful days in the 
race or by games of chance. Progressive eucher 
and bridge whist which had so often afforded di- 
version and amusement were forgotten in the mad 
attempt to escape the horrors of anticipation or 
actual realization of a meeting with the demon 
locusts. There was only one class of persons who 
did not abandon their meetings, or in the least 
change the tenor of their lives. We refer to the 
class to which Grace Dolent belonged. They had 
their prayer meetings and their conferences dur- 
ing those awful months as at other times. Their 
meetings were not once invaded by the demon 


HAVE THE GATES OF HELL BEEN OPENED. 177 


locusts. Behind the walls of Talitha Cumi and 
scores of places like it, all over the world, no one 
was ever bitten. Some of the inmates of these 
places were stung, but not in the Home. They 
were stung simply because they were the servants 
of evil, just as thousands who made no pretense 
at holiness. 

For all the strange, fear-inspiring and deadly 
events which we have described in these chapters, 
men of learning had an explanation; but for the 
appearance of the demon locust the man of science 
was as unable to account as the terror stricken 
layman. The victims among the one class were as 
numerous as in the other, and all were equally 
terrified. The impression of the scientists was 
kindred to that of the layman — that they were 
devil-locusts, messengers from the bottomless pit 
— for the like had never been seen or heard of in 
all the ages. How long the terror might continue, 
or into what it might finally develop, no one ven- 
tured to predict. Those who doubted the existence 
of a hell, and of a future world now were compelled 
to admit that there existed worlds of darkness and 
beings of diabolical power upon which no human 
being had heretofore ever looked. They shud- 
dered as they thought of what strange and evil 
beings might be locked up in those awful worlds, 
nor did they venture to guess at the extent of those 
worlds. "WFat strange powers of evil those under 
worlds might vomit forth upon the defenseless in- 
13 


178 HAVE THE GATES OF HELL BEEN OPENED. 

habitants of earth they did not so mrich as venture 
to say. They confessed that here evidently were 
worlds and beings which their glasses had never 
discerned and at which their science had never 
ventured a guess. But with all this, men repented 
not of their sins, nor did they for a moment admit 
that their own sins might have been the means of 
opening the gates of hell against them. In these 
the supreme moments of their guilt which were 
also the moments of their anguish, if they had 
raised the cry of the penitent king of Israel: 
‘‘Against thee and thee only have I sinned and 
done this evil,^^ He who hears the cry of the 
penitent would have delivered them from the jaws 
of hell and shut the doors of its destruction from 
them. 

There was one class, the class who did not 
abandon one meeting for prayer or study of the 
Word, which now recognized as they had done be- 
fore, but now in a fuller sense then ever before, 
that devils are not a mere fiction of the Bible. 
They realized that there is but a door between 
this world and the fiery abyss with its myriads 
of evil beings, 


CHAPTEE XVI. 



In spite of the apparent want of success attend- 
ing her first attempt, Mrs. DeLisle felt that she 
must try once more to summon to her aid super- 
natural powers through the medium, Madam — 

It seemed to her that almost any certainty would 
be preferable to the anxious suspense, which ban- 
ished sleep and made the hours a nightmare of 
dreadful possibilities. So Mrs. DeLisle once more 
appealed to Dr. Knowit for his escort, and upon 
receipt of his favorable reply they proceeded to- 
gether to the house of the medium. 

The Madam took her place in the chair, and the 
room was silent and dark save for the flickering, 
eery lights and shadows dancing upon the wall, 
cast there by an arc light outside, which the drawn 
curtain failed wholly to exclude. 

There were a series of knockings and mysterious 
taps upon the wall, and from the direction of the 
medium’s chair came the low murmur of a sort of 
chant. Suddenly, with startling abruptness, these 
( 179 ) 


180 


EVIL SHALL SLAY THE WICKED. 


inen-made sounds ceased, and the timbers of the 
house groaned and creaked as though in agony. A 
dull phosphorescence appeared in the corner of 
the room, beside the medium’s chair. Dr. Knowit 
felt the hair upon his head stir at the roots and his 
body stiffened in nameless terror. The phospho- 
rescence glowed and spread rapidly upward to- 
ward the ceiling in a luminous cloud, which yet 
gave out no light, for the room was in pitchy dark- 
ness. Dr. Knowit heard the body of Mrs. DeLisle 
slip softly to the floor from her chair. Little danc- 
ing flames marked out the chair and body of the 
medium, who apparently half sat, half reclined, in 
a deep trance. The Doctor tried to cry out, but 
his dry tongue and stiffened throat would give 
forth no sound. He tried to move but his limbs 
were frozen stiff and lifeless. It seemed that only 
his brain was conscious, abnormally active. He 
closed his eyes, but through his lowered lids he 
still saw the palely glowing cloud at the side of 
the medium’s chair, slowly rising farther and 
farther from the floor and growing taller, while 
the lambent flame xdayed over the woman’s figure. 
Gradually a shape took form in the nebulous 
cloud. A being, tall, clothed in flowing draperies 
which continually waved about its form, bent 
slowly over the medium, with outstretched arms, 
its face averted from the Doctor. Suddenly, as its 
embrace enclosed the woman, she shrieked — a cry 
fraught with all the agony and terror of irretriev- 


EVIL SHALL SLAY THE WICKED. 


181 


able fate, the wail of a lost soul. Then the figure 
turned its awful face toward the Doctor and he 
lapsed into the blessed relief of unconsciousness. 

When Dr. Knowit again opened his eyes the 
lights had been switched on in the room, and a 
trembling man servant informed him that at the 
shriek of his mistress he had rushed in from the 
hall, to find the room in complete darkness. He 
switched on the lights and summoned two more 
servants who had taken Mrs. DeLisle from the 
room and restored her to consciousness, and she 
was now awaiting the appearance of Dr. Knowit. 
The man appealed to the Docix)r to know what had 
happened. He said he was afraid to approach or 
touch the madam. The Doctor arose, and together 
the two men approached the woman. Her body 
still sat, stiff and stark in the great chair, but fal- 
len somewhat to the side so that her averted face 
was hidden in the cushions, as though she had 
turned her head aside to shut out the sight of 
something. Dr. Knowit touched her wrist, but the 
pulse had ceased and the flesh was cold as marble. 
This in itself was inexplicable, as it was scarcely 
a half hour since they had all entered the room to- 
gether. Then he gently turned the head so as to 
expose her face. A look of agony and mortal ter* 
ror was stamped upon the features and the wide 
eyes stared sightlessly out from the distorted 
face. The servant cried out and fled, and the Doc- 
tor hurried, shuddering, from the room. Meeting 


182 


EVIL SHALL SLAY THE WICKED. 


Mrs. DeLisle in the hall the two hastened away 
from the dreadful place, the Doctor still shaking 
and shuddering as with the ague. 

I The post-mortem examination really left the 
cause of the Madam ^s death as much enshrouded 
in mystery as ever, but the reported cause was 
heart failure. A few days later the body was con- 
veyed with impressive funeral ceremonies to the 
crematory. The house of the famous medium was 
thronged with a great crowd of people, for the wo- 
man had, by her arts, accumulated much wealth 
and formed a very wide acquaintance. We know 
not if the husbands she has estranged from their 
wives, the rich she had impoverished, the families 
she had broken up, formed a part of the surging 
throng. Many, certainly, came through an idle or 
morbid curiosity. The body was completely hid- 
den beneath a great heap of flowers, for of neces- 
sity the distorted face with its hideous expression 
of terror, was concealed from the public gaze, so 
that the sensation hunters went away ungratified. 

It was a good thing for the medium when she 
was enabled, by the visit of so wealthy and in- 
fluential a woman as Mrs. DeLisle, to circulate far 
and wide the report of the disappearance of the 
young couple — Mrs. DeLisle ’s daughter and son- 
in-law. It brought her yet more prestige, and in- 
creased the golden stream flowing into her purse, 
and she had shrewdly availed herself of this fact 
to its uttermost, in spite of her promises to the 


EVIL SHALL SLAY THE WICKED. 


183 


contrary. So it came about that the distressing 
circumstances which the DeLisle's had hoped to 
keep to themselves, were blazoned far and wide, 
and as a consequence they could not venture out 
without being subjected to the inquisitive, and 
often impudent and embarrassing stare of the 
curious. Thus continually, like a vampire, the 
Madam had fattened upon others ’ distresses. 

So, scarcely a month from the time when she 
had first been interviewed by Mrs. DeLisle, the 
famous medium lay dead in her great, hushed 
drawing rooms, where so often there had been 
light and flowers, music and laughter, and the 
merry hum of conversation. Her wealth availed 
her nothing. Her ability to summon to her the 
spirits, and to call forth supernatural powers 
availed her nothing — rather they had been the 
cause of her downfall and mysterious death. For 
there is reason to believe that in proportion as 
they are appealed to and worshipped, the powers 
of darkness gain power and dominion among men, 
till finally they may work their evil will with the 
frail children of dust. 

A day, and the hurrying stream of life had 
closed over the place she had once filled, and there 
remained no ripple, no memory of the woman and 
her strange powers, save as others of her deluded 
sect strove to imitate her evil example. She was 
scarcely mentioned save in the execrations of those 
she had dragged dovm and ruined. Thus passed 
the Madam. 


CHAPTER XVII. 






“Let Us Love One Another: 
For Love is of God.” 

J 





We hear much said about affinity. It is said 
unaccountable affinities draw opposite natures to- 
gether. It may be that that which draws opposite 
natures together is rightly termed affinity ; but the 
affinity does not lie in their diversity. It rests on 
that which is alike in those same apparently op- 
posite natures. Affinity binds together the robber 
clan, and nerves the arm of the assassin to plunge 
the fatal blade into the heart of its innocent vic- 
tim. We see too, how men who are controlled with 
the desire to gain wealth have an affinity for one 
another and so combine to enrich themselves and 
to arm one another with all the power the central- 
ization of wealth can bestow. All these clans may 
at times quarrel and have their disagreements 
among themselves, but the mysterious force the 
philosopher is pleased to call affinity, binds them 
to each other, and brings about unity in action, 
( 184 ) 


LET US LOVE ONE ANOTHER. 


185 


and the consequent achievement of results which 
are perfectly marvelous. 

In all ages of the world believers in Christ and 
His power to save have been bound together even 
in the midst of their quarrels and diversity of 
opinion. The secret of their affinity lay in the one 
purpose of their lives, to make the kingdoms of 
this world the kingdom of our Lord and His 
Christ. Whatever may have been the cause of 
their disagreements and quarrels even, and there 
is abundant evidence that these disagreements 
have existed even among the regenerate, there has 
always existed a unity in essentials to the supreme 
purpose of their lives. It is this affinity among 
Christians that forms the foundation, the resting 
place for Heaven’s ladder upon which the angels 
of God’s ministry ascend and descend, and makes 
their service for them that are to be heirs of sal- 
vation, possible. So also among the workers of in- 
iquity, their affinity born in their common cause 
for Satan and the establishment of his kingdom 
is found the wire through which flows the power 
of hell into every avenue of unregenerate society. 
This affinity between humanity and satan is the 
power which opens the bottomless pit and makes 
it possible for the demons of the lower pits to de- 
ploy themselves among the haunts of men. The 
awful experiences of men with the demon locusts 
which we have just described were made possible 
only because men and women yielded themselves 


186 


LET US ONE ANOTHER. 


the willing servants of unrighteousness. The 
devil needs no second invitation to occupy, and 
when he once gains a place he mans it well with 
his imps, and holds it with a tenacity worthy of a 
better cause. It has been well said: ‘‘As we are 
heavenly in our efforts, and open and yielding to 
things divine, heaven opens to us, and spirits of 
heaven become our helpers, comforters, protectors 
and guides ; and as we are devilish in our tempers, 
unbelieving, defiant of Grod, and self-sufficient, the 
doors of separation between us and hell gradually 
yield and the smoke of the pit gathers over us, and 
the spirits of perdition come forth to move among 
us and do us mischief. As the angels of God 
withdraw on the one hand the messengers of satan 
occupy to torment and destroy on the other. It is 
right, therefore, to have a wholesome fear for 
these emmissaries of the pit, for they are ever 
present to work us harm. Whatever woes may yet 
overtake the actors in these pages, one thing is 
sure, the author of these woes is the father of lies, 
and the agency which makes his operation possible 
is fallen humanity. 

The evil one sowed the first seed. For six thou- 
sand years the crop attended by himself and un- 
der his watchful care, has reproduced itself in 
ever increasing power so that to-day the world 
is a habitation more fit for demons than for the 
angels of God. No wonder, therefore, if in the 
closing days of this dispensation, this world be- 


LET US LOVE ONE ANOTHEE. 


187 


comes the theater for visible demoniacal power 
and demoniacal destruction. But withal, be it re- 
membered, demoniacal power can never destroy 
a single regenerate life ; to destroy what God has 
created in purity and righteousness would be con- 
trary to the very being and all the promises of 
God. 

There are two souls to which we have called at- 
tention in these pages, one of which at least seems 
to have been thus brought into association with 
the other, through disappointment, but this seem- 
ing accident and disappointment was no doubt by 
His appointment who sees the sparrow in its fall 
and who has carefully meted out the heavens with 
a span. The two characters to which we refer 
are Grace Dolent and the young woman who was 
picked up from the street the night of the Gregory 
wedding. No two lives ever came nearer having 
but a single purpose, than these two had ever after 
the night the young mother had laid away her babe 
in what certainly would have been a pauper’s 
grave, but for the thoughtfulness of Grace Dolent 
and the liberality of the congregation to which she 
belonged. There have never come to our notice 
truer devotion and unfeigned love. We have some- 
how gotten confused in our ideas concerning love 
and friendship. We think love is a misnomer for 
the affection which grows between two lives of the 
same sex; but if God is the essence of love then 
the highest regard of man for woman can also ex- 


188 


LET US LOVE ONE ANOTHER. 


ist in man for man, or woman for woman. It is 
certain that the affection between these two wo- 
men was worthy of the name of love, for their re- 
gard for one another consisted in the total forget- 
fulness of self whenever the interests or the hap- 
piness of the other were concerned. They did not 
live for each other, but they lived one life in the 
interests of their ideal. They served each other 
always because they had one ideal and each lived 
for that ideal. There consequently was no dis- 
agreement. Their love fed on their work together 
in the one cause they both had espoused — the help 
for fallen humanity. 

It may be difficult to conceive just what relation 
prayer and creed hold in such lives. Let us say 
in brief, creed furnished the ideal and prayer the 
motive power for its attainment. A man’s deed 
is never loftier than his creed. Faith in the Bible 
may be called a superstition, but after all, the 
highest type of a man, the Christ, had implicit 
faith in the Bible. Prayer may be said to be 
simply a spiritual exercise which in itself is as 
harmles as it is impotent ; but after all, it remains 
a fact that the Son of Man did His greatest deeds 
of mercy and love after long nights of prayer. He, 
the perfect one, felt the need of prayer and had 
faith in a personal heavenly Father. If those who 
prate so much about the foolishness of creed and 
call the faith of our fathers a superstition would 
take a moment’s time to think of the legacies they 


LET US LOVE ONE ANOTHER. 


189 


have received from those fathers, they would have 
much reason to keep silent. 

It may be difficult to determine which was the 
nobler in these lives, their habit to meet for 
mutual prayer and study of the Word, or their 
habit of working together to help someone to rise 
above their environment, and to break the chains 
of heredity. It was the study of the Word which 
gave them the ideals of their lives, and pointed 
out the worth of an outcast; it was their prayer 
habit which made their lives potent in gaining 
those whom they sought. If those who do not be- 
lieve in prayer any more than they believe in the 
Bible know of truly great and noble lives who were 
of their same opinion let them mention them by 
name, and it will give the rest of us more con- 
fidence in the power of their unbelief, but until 
then we have faith in the ^^supersitition’’ which 
segregated the lives of these two women. 

It is time that our readers should Imow some- 
thing more of this same woman who was picked 
up on the street, the evening of the Gregory-De- 
Lisle wedding. Her story as she told it to Grace 
Dolent is briefly this : She lived in a town not a 
thousand miles from the great metropolis for the 
greater part of her life. For the first eighteen 
years of her life she lived with her father and 
mother and went to school. Her father was a well- 
to-do mechanic, and the home in which they lived 
was their own. One day there came to the town in 


190 


LET US LOVE ONE ANOTHER. 


which she lived, a young man who seemed to have 
lots of money and he spent it freely. By and by 
this young man took a position as bookkeeper in 
a large business owned by gentlemen in New York. 
He was free in every sense of the word — free with 
his money, free in his faith if he had any, and 
above all, free to bestow his atfections upon the 
beautiful, trusting girl of whom we speak. 

Her downfall and her poverty began when in an 
evil hour she consented to his request to go to New 
York to a certain No. on a certain street. He told 
her the people there knew of her coming, and 
would receive her. He himself promised to come 
that same evening. They would then be married. 
She went as he directed. She was received by a 
stylish looking woman into a large house and given 
a room. Her friend did not come as he had prom- 
ised that evening. When the next day she told the 
woman that she would return to her own home, 
that worthy frankly told her that she had been in- 
trusted to her keeping and that she could not go 
until she received other orders. The girPs heart 
would have broken at that same moment when she 
realized her helpless condition; had it not been 
that she had unbounded confidence in her lover. 
He did finally come, but he did not take her to a 
clergyman to be married. He told her she must 
wait a few days. Then she begged to be taken 
home ; for she had come to the city on the pretence 
.of visiting a friend and remaining a few days. 


LET US LOVE ONE ANOTHEB. 


191 


When her lover told her he would see her parents 
and tell them she was prolonging her visit a few 
days, and that any letters she would write would 
be promptly delivered, she was content to remain 
a few days longer. The excuse for not letting her 
out of doors alone was that a girl of her striking 
appearance was in danger when on the street 
alone. 

At this time the earthquake of which we have 
spoken elsewhere occurred. It was several days 
before she again saw her lover. When he came he 
told her that her father and mother had both been 
crushed beneath a falling wall. She now implored 
him to take her home, and to marry her before 
they went away. Whether his love for her or the 
terror with which the earthquake had inspired him 
induced him to marry her we cannot tell; but he 
obtained a license under an assumed name and 
they were married. He told her that his parents 
would disown him if he would let them know that 
he had married a woman not of their social stand- 
ing; for his parents were rich and very proud. 

After the wedding he took her to her home. With 
a broken heart she realized that the two most lov- 
ing hearts she had ever known were cold in 
death. One thought comforted her. It was the 
thought that her parents never knew of her fall, 
and how she had deceived them in going to the 
city to a place and on an errand different from 
Tvhat she had said. But the bitterness of that one 


192 


LET US LOVE ONE ANOTHER. 


deception, the sorrow of that one disobedience 
haunted her all her life. The wages of that sin 
embittered her life, and its final penalty was her 
death. 

After their marriage her husband quit his place, 
and took her to a distant town. He told her how 
his parents had found out that he had married, 
and how they promptly disowned him. In their 
new home he soon obtained a place as a book- 
keeper ; but he fell in with bad company and took 
to drinking ; in fact he had formed the drink habit 
before he ever knew his wife. In the end he lost 
his job, and when their money was nearly all gone 
he came back to the very place where she had been 
a captive before their marriage. Here in New 
York, he obtained little work; for he was not re- 
liable. Finally when their money was all gone, 
and the best of their clothing pawned, he resolved 
to take her along Fifth Avenue in the vain hope 
of finding friends. The rest of the story the 
reader already knows. 

But the end is near. The life that was always 
pure, but too easily persuaded because it believed 
others were necessarily pure, was gradually fad- 
ing out of this world. The man whom she loved 
she never saw after he left her that night to beg 
as he said, a morsel of bread in the brilliantly il- 
luminated home of the DeLisles. She seemed to 
be atoning for the mistakes she had made by the 
fervency of her work in behalf of the fallen. Or 


LET US LOVE ONE ANOTHER. 


193 


was it because she knew the bitterness of their 
lives that she was so eager to rescue and help ? Be 
this as it may; a lingering disease had fastened 
upon her vitals, and about the time of the appear- 
ance of the demon locusts, she dropped into an 
early grave. Her end was peaceful and the wo- 
man who loved her as a sister, laid her beside her 
babe. 



13 


CHAPTEE XVIII. 



t 


X “KNOWLEDGE SHALL 





BE INCREASED ” t 


Where am I? What place is this?’’ 

‘‘You are in the ‘haven of rest’ of ‘the blue-eyed 
three.’ ” “It is a nice quiet place, an ideal resort 
for meditation and rest. It is furnished as you 
see, with comfortable, I may say, luxurious furni- 
ture, and has all the latest scientific appliances for 
comfort and health.” 

During this deliverance, the man who had asked 
the questions was looking about the room in a 
semi-conscious way. He was lying on a comfort- 
able cot in one comer of a large room, the sides of 
which were neatly frescoed in oil; but the ceiling 
seemed hea^^ oak in its natural color. 

The speaker went on dilating on the comforts 
and conveniences of the apartment: “Your rest- 
ing place is about twenty-five feet beneath the sur- 
face of the street. That is the reason of the peace- 
ful atmosphere of the place. You see you are un- 
disturbed by outside noises. There is nothing like 


( 194 ) 


KNOWLEDGE SHALL BE INCREASED. 195 

it for a convalescent. The ceiling has a layer of 
solidly packed earth upon it. Over this is the 
cement floor of the cellar. The cellar is beneath 
a fine house of one of the best streets in the town, 
to which you came four days ago with that lovely 
girl who you say is your wife — your daughter I 
would rather believe. But never mind. I was 
about to say, that ventilator in the ceiling has a 
corresponding perforated iron in the cement floor 
above. Being beneath a water spigot, the cops 
who once searched the place above, and in fact 
everybody except those who know, think the per- 
forated iron allows the waste water to run into a 
sewer, but we know it is a ventilator. That little 
machine which makes the whirring noise, is a 
water decomposer. The oxygen of the decomposed 
water makes the air pure and fresh and is enough 
to make the dead alive. We cure consumption 
down here. That blue flame under the kettle is the 
hydrogen of the decomposed water. You see it 
also illuminates the place. We, Hhe blue-eyed 
three, ’ expect to get a patent on the heating, venti- 
lating and lighting process, for it is all our own 
invention, and better than any of the machines in 
use for heating and lighting by decomposed water. 
The little water motor furnishes the power for the 
decomposition of the water into its constituent 
gases. This is therefore an ideal place. The cook- 
ing, lighting, heating, ventilating is all done by de- 
composed water.’’ 


196 


KNOWLEDGE SHALL BE INCKEASED. 


All this time the man on the cot was regarding 
the speaker with open-eyed wonder. He tried to 
interrupt him several times, but the speaker went 
on apparently oblivious of his desire, and entirely 
absorbed in his topic. Now when he stopped and 
looked at the man on the cot, as if expecting him to 
say something, the latter repeated his former 
question : ‘ ^ Where am IV ^ 

^ ^ That ^s just what I have been trying to tell you. 
I repeat, for you seem a little slow of comprehen- 
sion, you are in the ‘haven of rest.^ ’’ 

“But in heaven’s name, man, tell me how I got 
here ? ’ ’ 

“You were carried here. You were entirely 
too sick to walk, so those who found you on the 
side of the old boat, picked you up and brought 
you here. We have given you precisely the same 
treatment we give consumptives, and in fact all 
who come here. ’ ’ 

The man on the cot again stared in a vacant, 
incomprehensible way at the speaker. Then he 
said, “You do not mean that this is a hospital and 
this a ward for special cases? You cannot mean 
that?” 

“I told you this is the ‘haven of rest.’ ” People 
who come here are nearly always hurt, but we do 
not boast that this is a hospital. In fact we have 
never done any advertising of any kind. Our busi- 
ness is strictly private. We generally pledge our 
patients to eternal secrecy before they leave. We 


KNOWLEDGE SHALL BE INCREASED. 


197 


induce (with special emphasis on the word ‘ in- 
duce 0 them to keep quiet. This is absolutely 
necessary to the continuance of our business. The 
idea and the business is strictly our own. ’ ^ 

The man on the cot seemed more puzzled than 
ever. Could it be possible that he was in a rob- 
bers ^ den ? But how was he brought hither ? The 
man before him had a smoothly shaven face. His 
complexion was light and his eyes a deep blue. He 
had on a pair of morocco slippers, a pair of black 
pantaloons, and a smoking jacket, a stiff -bosomed 
shirt in the front of which glistened a diamond 
of the first water. There was an air of elegance 
and taste about the room, which he noticed had no 
windows, and was illuminated by a bright artificial 
light which was fixed in the center of the ceiling 
and which glowed with a noiseless steady light. 
The chairs and couches were entirely in leather. 
The table was the richest mahogany. There was 
a closet filled with the rarest China and silver. On 
a buffet, also mahogany, stood a cut glass decanter 
surrounded by half a dozen cut glass goblets. The 
decanter was half full of red wine. All this and 
more, the man on the couch noticed. The sole 
other occupant of the room was silent and watched 
him with an amused expression. When he had 
finished his survey, he once more turned to the 
man in dress shirt and pantaloons and said, 
wish very much that you would tell me how I came 
here, and whether my friends know where I am? 


198 


KNOWLEDGE SHALL BE INCREASED. 


I know they must be anxious about me. I seem to 
remember a sting or a blow; but nothing after 
tbat.^^ 

replied bis friend of the morocco slip- 
pers, ‘‘I did not bring you here. In fact I did not 
know you were coming until I saw the ventilator 
pp there in the ceiling descend to the floor, then I 
saw your big feet then the rest of your thin dried 
body, and last of all your bald bead. Whilst you 
were descending I made up my mind that you 
would need a special diet, and that it might be a 
long time before you would be able to leave. Your 
eyes were closed and you seemed fast asleep. For 
two days I have given you hypodermics to stimu- 
late your heart. We seldom lose a case down here, 
but one time, the first day you were here I thought 
you were gone. You stopped breathing and your 
heart stood still. The doctors outside would have 
called that the crisis. A good stimulant brought 
you around, and you have been convalescent ever 
since. Why, man, for the last twenty-four hours 
you have been eating like a wood-chopper. You 
seem ravenously hungry, and as we give you only 
the best, your board bill may be a little steep. We 
always have three items in our bills, the medicine, 
the board, the bed; then the nurse brings in her 
own bill. Inasmuch as I am the nurse in this case, 
I will get that fee; and since you have given me 
little trouble after the first day, my bill will be 
reasonable enough.’^ 


KNOWLEDGE SHALL BE INCREASED. 


199 


The man on the conch (for it was a conch rather 
than a cot, it was wide and had springs and was 
snrmonnted by a tnfted mattress, an air cnshion 
it mnst have been) was silent and in deep thonght. 
It was evident that he still had tronble to think co- 
herently. He did remember that he walked along 
the sidewalk which led away from the hotel at 
which he had registered, and that seeing some 
boats tnrned npside down on trussels, he left the 
sidewalk and went down to the beach to have a 
clearer view, and to breath the balmy zephyrs 
which were coming from the ocean like the per- 
fnmed breath from the lips of a sleeping maiden. 
He remembered too, that whilst he stood there he 
thonght he heard a footfall on the grinding sands 
behind him ; bnt before he conld turn he was con- 
scions of a blinding, paralyzing pain. It shot like 
a flash of lightning throngh his whole body, bnt its 
chief sonrce seemed in his throat. He tried to 
call ont, but before he conld do so he lost con- 
sciousness. From that time to this his life was 
a blank. As he lay on his conch it came back 
to him vividly enough. He also remembered hear- 
ing how persons had been rendered unconscious 
for days and perfectly helpless, by being struck on 
the pneumogastric nerve. Could it be possible that 
this was what had occurred in his case, and that 
he was now being held by this man for a ransom. 

Again turning his eyes upon the man in the 
morocco slippers who had been watching every 


200 


KNOWLEDGE SHALL BE INCREASED. 


change in the face of his victim, he said to him; 
‘‘Tell me, are you holding me for a ransom T’ 

The other shrugged his shoulders, and said, 
“We don’t talk about ransoms here. We are not 
supposed to know how people are hurt. We only 
know that they are given into our care. We do 
the best we can for them; and you will admit we 
are well equipped. We must charge for their en- 
tertainment, and we pledge them to secrecy for a 
number of reasons. That is all. If you are ready 
to pay your bill, and to take the oath of secrecy, 
there is no reason why you should not go in a day 
or two. You are too weak to stir for a few hours 
to come, so possess your soul in patience. Aside 
from the fact that your friends will be anxious 
to see you, there is nothing to worry you. You 
are rich, and can pay your bill. Your business 
goes on well without you. We hope to have your 
wife visit you in a few days. She will give you 
company. It is likely that we will leave you to 
yourselves, aside from supplying your wants, un- 
til the details for your discharge can be arranged. 
You can finish your honeymoon down here. I am 
sure you will not find more secluded quarters, and 
none much more comfortable, your mansion on 
the Avenue not excepted. 

“You do not mean to say that my wife knows 
where I am, and does not make every etfort to 
come to me immediately?” 

“There now! Do not excite yourself. It is not 


KNOWLEDGE SHALL BE INCREASED. 


201 


good for you in your weakened and nervous con- 
dition. Your wife does not as yet know where 
you are; but that is no reason why she may not 
soon know, and even come to see you. The day 
of miracles is not past. You begin to realize how 
suddenly and unexpectedly you came here. This 
is the day of surprises — surprises in science, as 
you see right about you here, surprises in nature, 
and surprises in down-right deviltry. Your friends 
must think you drowned; for my brother told me 
that half a dozen men are even now dragging the 
lagoon. On the bank, overlooking and superin- 
tending the work are your father-in-law and the 
superintendent of the detectives. Of course they 
will not find you, and the mystery will be deep- 
ened. ’ ’ 

‘^Will you not please bring my father-in- 
law and my wife to me to-day? Man, have mercy 
on me and on my wife. Name the sum of money 
you demand and if it is within reason, I will fill 
you out my check. Pity us — 

There now! What did I tell you about not 
exciting yourself? You talk like a child. Man, I 
could not tell your father-in-law and wife where 
you are for all you are worth. Your father-in-law 
will never come here with my consent. Your wife 
can come only as you came.^^ 

^^For heaven ^s sake! You do not mean to half 
murder her as you did me, and then drag her 
here?^’ 


202 


KNOWLEDGE SHAI^ BE INCREASED. 


‘‘I cannot discuss the matter any farther with 
you. I have told you too much already. I have 
unduly excited you. Calm yourself. Your wife’s 
heart will not break until she sees you. You shall 
have her society. I must leave you now for a lit- 
tle while. You will let things alone. Make your- 
self easy, and be happy. Forget the cares of the 
world. You know Uncle William said long ago ; — 
Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye, 
And where care lodges sleep wdll never lie; 

But where unbruised youth with unstuffed brain 
Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth 
reign. ’ ’ ’ 

Having finished his quotation he emitted a low 
whistle, and almost immediately the ventilator in 
the ceiling descended at the end of what seemed 
a steel tape. In the meantime our friend in the 
morocco slippers had put on a coat and stepping 
on the steel disk of the ventilator, he ascended 
through the ceiling. The ventilator was in its 
place as usual and all was serene, except the feel- 
ings of the bridegroom on the couch. 

He thought a long while. The man who had 
just left him was evidently well educated. He was 
nevertheless a villain of the deepest dye whose 
hands were no doubt stained with every species of 
crime. "Wliat a striking confirmation of the theory, 
that if you educate you necessarily reform and 
make virtuous. 

He had lain for half an hour or more, thinking; 


KNOWLEDGE SHALL BE INCREASED. 


203 


then at last he attempted to rise. He fell back 
exhausted after sitting upright for only a few 
moments. He was so tired and weak that he fell 
into a slumber which was more the result of un- 
consciousness than the cravings of his nature for 
sleep. Here we leave him for the present. When 
he awakes he will find himself still there, in the 
place of his captivity. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



When the porter told Mrs. Gregory that the 
train would remain at the station at least twenty 
minutes, she made up her mind to go out for a lit- 
tle walk about the old southern town. She thought 
that she might walk on the firm earth and thus 
rest herself from the motion of the train. The 
real reason was that she might divert her 
thoughts. For more than three days her mind 
had gone over the meager details attending her 
husband ^s disappearance until those same 
thoughts seemed to sear her brain each time she 
went over the circumstances of Gregory’s walking 
out and never returning. 

The pleasant March air was invigorating, the 
gentle breezes kissed her fevered brow and caused 
the bewitching ringlets of her raven hair to brush 
across her eyes whose brightness had been tem- 
porarily dimmed by her continual weeping. After 
having bathed her face, it is true the sadness was 
(204) 


IT IS SPOKT TO A FOOL TO DO MISCHIEF. 205 

not so visible. It is wonderful what a change a 
little water and a towel, a brush and comb can 
make even in a face sodden by weeping. She 
walked far up the street, but there was nothing to 
particularly attract her attention. There were the 
same negroes loafing in the door-steps of their 
miserable homes. Here and there was the frog- 
like thrum of a banjo, and the merry, good-natured 
laugh of some dark-skinned maiden. Mrs. Greg- 
ory realized as she had never done before, that 
happiness does not necessarily go with wealth and 
social standing, and that a laugh is the most Dem- 
ocratic of the emotions, preferring to make its 
place of abode in the humblest cottage and illumin- 
ing the plainest face rather than making its dwell- 
ing in the mansion and forever adding its sweet- 
ness to the classic features of some queen of fash- 
ion. She realized too, that she was not on the 
principal street of the town, and turned to retrace 
her steps. 

On her turning to go back she was confronted 
by a man with a little leather satchel. The man 
was dressed in grey from head to foot, his shoes 
even, perfectly matching his hat. His eyes were 
a deep blue. She remembered all this for he had 
thrust himself upon her attention every time she 
appeared in the car outside of her drawing room. 
He gave her one searching glance and then caught 
her in his arms. Almost instantly she felt a sting- 
ing pain in her throat, she reeled. She was not 


206 IT IS SPORT TO A FOOL TO DO MISCHIEF. 

sure whether she succeeded in uttering a scream, 
but she afterwards remembered that she had made 
the effort. 

Inasmuch as Mrs. Gregory was not sure what 
she did after the stranger laid hold upon her on 
the street, it will be necessary for us to give a de- 
tailed account of her experiences. The man who 
caught her, also called as if in deep distress, to a 
negro standing on the corner of the street. He 
told him that his wife had preceded him up the 
street, and that he, having been detained by a lit- 
tle business, succeeded in overtaking her just as 
she was about to retrace her steps. She was ac- 
customed to such attacks as this, in which she be- 
came semi-conscious. He asked the negro to di- 
rect him to some private house, and he thinking to 
make a little fee, escorted the couple to his own 
home nearby. 

It was evident to the negress, the divinity of the 
home to which Mrs. Gregory was led, that the wo- 
man was not conscious of what she was doing. She 
seemed speechless and only semi-conscious of her 
surroundings. The man who was with her, told 
the negress that they had been on their way North 
after a little stay with a friend in the South, and 
that inasmuch as his wife was too ill to take a long 
journey, he would go back to the place from which 
they came, that same evening. He directed the 
negro to get one of his colored brethren to drive 
them to the station, at the same time handing him 


IT IS SPORT TO A FOOL TO DO MISCHIEF. 207 


a five dollar bill, and telling him to keep the change 
after the fare to the depot was paid. He also told 
him not to allow the reporters to obtain the news 
of a woman becoming unconscious on the street. 
The wisdom of all this his colored friend saw, and 
promised him that everything should be as he 
wished. 

That evening an old hack was driven to the 
station, a man in gray stepped on the station plat- 
form and heavily supported a woman deeply veil- 
ed, to the cars. He had secured a drawing room, 
and shortly after the train left, the woman fell 
into a quiet sleep. Thereupon her escort left her 
and retired to the smoking room. 

When the train arrived at the station from 
which Mrs. Gregory had gone less than twenty- 
four hours ago, the man in grey again veiled her, 
took a thin black silk coat out of his satchel and 
put it upon her, then with the help of the porter 
who supported the woman on the one side while 
the man in grey had a hold on her other arm, 
speaking to her softly to all of which she made no 
reply, they stepped upon the platform. Then the 
man in grey gave the porter a dollar bill and the 
two left the depot, the man in grey still support- 
ing the woman who leaned heavily upon his arm. 
A block from the depot he hailed the cab, telling 
the driver that the woman was ill, and that he 
should drive them to No. 13, on — Ave. No. 13, 
— Avenue was a fine dwelling, and the people in 


208 IT IS SPORT TO A FOOL TO DO MISCHIEF. 

the neighborhood believed it to be a boarding 
house. It was owned by three brothers who looked 
very much alike. They each had blue eyes and 
light hair. They generally dressed alike, so that 
it was difficult to tell which went away or which 
was at home. Only when they saw the three to- 
gether were the neighbors sure that all were at 
home. 

When the two arrived in the vestibule of the 
dwelling, the woman ^s black veil and silk coat 
were removed, and she was supported to the cel- 
lar. There the large steel, perforated disk beneath 
the spigot was removed, the woman was made to 
stand on the lower disk and the steel tape uncurled 
until she landed on the rugs over the oak floor of 
the room occupied by Mr. Gregory. The light in 
the room was extinguished, and Mr. Gregory lay 
in a deep sleep. The only noise to be heard was 
the whir of the water motor and the accompanying 
decomposition of water. The hydrogen flame still 
burned beneath the steaming kettle. 

The disk of the ventilator again descended ; but 
in a little while a woman dropped herself from the 
ceiling to the floor and walked over to the couch 
upon which the man who had lowered her into the 
apartment had placed Mrs. Gregory. This woman 
quietly and modestly disrobed or rather helped the 
seemingly hypnotized Mrs. Gregory to disrobe. 
Then she was made comfortable upon the couch 
not over ten feet away from the husband she lost 


IT IS SPORT TO A FOOL TO DO MISCHIEF. 209 


four days before, and whom she had mourned as 
dead. The woman dropped a curtain between the 
two couches, and the two sleepers rested entirely 
oblivious of the fact that they were under the same 
roof, in fact in the same room. 

Were we philosophers, you and I, we might well 
mediate upon the marvelous powers for good and 
for evil our modern life with all its physical and 
psychical development possesses. One fact we do 
know, without being philosophers in any sense of 
the word, that scientific development is not neces- 
sarily development in morals, nor can we gauge 
the depth of a man^s spiritual experience by the 
amount of his theological knowledge. I do not 
wonder much that the great mass of men think 
themselves ready for heaven because they can 
laugh at the exploded superstitions of their fore- 
fathers, and read by the electric light. They have 
been taught to believe that education and patriot- 
ism can and will answer every question and meet 
every want of our moral and spiritual natures. 


14 


CHAPTER XX. 


¥ “There is a Way Which Seemeth i 
r Right Unto a Man, but the Ends 1 
i- Thereof are the Ways of Death.” 4 

I J 

Grace Dolent was a girl of refinement and cul- 
ture. She possessed qualities of head and heart 
of no mean order. In her class at seminary where 
she graduated with honors on her nineteenth 
birthday, she was the acknowledged peer. In her 
father’s parish, which for the greater part of her 
young life was not in the city, she was known and 
loved by all. She was the grace and charm in 
every assemblage of young people to which she 
came. She always had a large company of ad- 
mirers and was by common consent the center of 
attraction without being conscious of it or the least 
effort on her part. 

At the close of her teens she became engaged 
to a young man who had chosen the foreign mis- 
sion field as the place for his life work. Inasmuch 
as the career of this young man ended before the 
scenes described in this book were laid, we can 
only make a passing reference to him as one of 
( 210 ) 


THERE IS A WAY THAT SEEMETH RIGHT. 211 


the forces in God’s providence which shaped the 
life and destiny of Grace Dolent. After the course 
of this young man at seminary was complete, and 
he was waiting for his commission from the 
American Board, after a long summer ’s campaign 
among the churches of his native land, he con- 
tracted that most uncertain and treacherous of 
diseases, typhoid fever. After battling with the 
disease for four weeks he succumbed, and with 
him went out the light of Grace Dolent ’s conjugal 
love. 

It was about this time her father was called to 
the church now occupied by the Rev. Dr. Knowit ; 
but he remained in this parish only two years. The 
congregation in that short time came to the con- 
clusion that he was entirely too puritanic in his 
ideas as to what constitutes a Christian life; and 
too austere in his theological belief. The truth of 
the matter was that the congregation '‘had more 
advanced ideas” than their pastor who had spent 
most of his years in the environment of a simple 
country parish. The membership of the church 
grew, it is true, but the additions came largely 
from the middle classes who heard the Rev. Dol- 
ent gladly and who were greatly helped by his 
ministry. 

During the brief time of her father’s pastorate 
among this people, Grace went into society only 
as circumstances compelled her, but at those times 
when her true nature asserted itself from beneath 


212 THEKE IS A WAY THAT SEEMETH EIGHT. 

the pall of her sorrow her intellectual sparkle was 
only out-shone by the fuller light of her spiritual 
life. 

Of every species of sorrow there is none more 
grievous than the sorrow of a betrothed maiden 
when she is bereft of the object of her atfections. 
It is a sorrow which she must nurse largely in the 
depth of her own wounded and bleeding heart. The 
flood-gates of her tears may lift themselves only 
in the solitude of her own woe. As the turtle dove 
utters its mournful lay to the lonely, unsympa- 
thetic forest, after the death of its mate, even so 
must the bereaved maiden mourn alone. The 
delicacy of her position bars even her tenderest 
and truest friend — her mother, from entering the 
sanctum of her soul to bind up the broken cords 
or to set in order the remnants of her blasted 
hopes. So also that which prevents her from cast- 
ing herself upon the bier of her dead lover, to 
weep there in all the tenderness of her womanly 
devotion, deprives her largely of human sympathy 
and drives her forth, wounded and sick, so that 
her solitude may not be too continuous, and her 
conduct seem stripped of maidenly modesty and 
charm. 

Because of this custom which is born and bred 
in a barbarism of our civilization, Grace Dolent 
could not exclude herself from the society of the 
young and often frivolous members of her fath- 
er’s congregation. But she never appeared among 


THERE IS A WAY THAT SEEMETH RIGHT. 213 


the young or the old without that calm dignity 
which is the real charm of young womanhood alike 
in the hour of its happiness and in the hour of its 
sorrow. 

It was whilst her father was pastor of the 
church in the city that the foundations of Talitha 
Cumi were laid by the ladies inspired by the zeal 
of Grace and her honored father. From its in- 
cipiency the finger of Providence pointed to Grace, 
then a maiden of twenty summers, to become the 
first matron. No similar institution ever had from 
its beginning, so many friends, as Talitha Cumi. 
Money flowed into its treasury by the thousands, 
and the directors were soon able to buy a property 
which has served the purposes of the ever grow- 
ing work. 

The successor of Eev. Dolent found that it was 
essential to his continuance as pastor of the con- 
gregation which had espoused this work, that he 
take a deep interest in the same. But inasmuch as 
this was one of the avenues along which Dr. 
Knowit worked, it was no onerous task for the 
Doctor to once in a while visit the institution and 
consult and at times frustrate the best plans of 
Miss Dolent for the institution's good. He always 
admitted to all who spoke of her and her work that 
there was positively no woman in New York who 
was better equipped mentally and spiritually than 
Grace, for this work. Of course her piety and 
faith were the simple old-fashioned kind which 


214 THERE IS A WAY THAT SEEMETH RIGHT. 

were no longer popular nor necessary. As long 
as she believed that her prayers could influence the 
depraved to change their manner of life, so long 
, she herself would labor to bring about the change, 
and so do good. How a girl as intelligent as Grace 
Dolent could believe ‘ ‘ all the prophets have said, ’ ’ 
he could not understand. Grace professed to be- 
lieve that the present dispensation might end al- 
most any year. She had been foolish enough to 
explain some of the phenomena in nature which 
had caused such changes, on the ground of super- 
natural intervention. She believed that they had 
occurred strictly in fulfillment of prophesy. It 
was her simple-hearted piety and devotion to duty 
that made it possible for him to listen to her fool- 
ish talks to her girls. 

Of course Dr. Knowit believed in the institu- 
tional church. The Wednesday evening service 
had been so poorly attended that he had very 
wisely with other churches, asked a boys’ club to 
meet on that evening. He allowed the boys to 
study the Beatitudes and the Psalms on that even- 
ing. Dr. Knowit was very careful in the selection 
of his Scripture for his young people. He would 
not let them read the prophecies or the historical 
books of the Old Testament, because he knew them 
to be ^Hull of inaccuracies.” 

Then too, Grace had strange notions with regard 
to popular amusements. She believed that the 
dance and the theatre were responsible for the 


THERE IS A WAY THAT SEEMETH RIGHT. 215 


downfall of many of the young women who came 
to the hom,e. He knew as every intelligent man 
knew, that when a young person starts out to sow 
wild oats he will sow them whether or not there 
be a theater or hall room. He considered it very 
important to refine and elevate these places so as 
to make it next to impossible for any one to be in- 
jured. He did not believe it wise to deny young 
people any form of amusement good or bad; but 
he did think it important to educate the young as 
to the baneful results which must necessarily fol- 
low a life of dissipation. 

For these and other reasons Dr. Knowit and 
Grace Dolent did not agree in their views of what 
should or should not be done by a member of the 
church. But as we have already said, the time for 
distinctions in the life of professed and non-pro- 
fessed Christians was long since past. The only 
visible difference was that church members — well, 
church members went to church, — sometimes, and 
they were more liberal toward the institutions for 
the good of the human race. 

When the blackness of which we have spoken 
began to spread over the face of the earth. Dr. 
Knowit and the clergymen with few exceptions be- 
lieved that the darkness was another of those 
natural phenonema which were capable of an ex- 
planation. It would no doubt be local. Volcanic 
ashes, in all probability! Each morning Dr. 
Knowit eagerly read the papers to see what had 


216 THEKE IS A WAY THAT SEEMETH EIGHT. 


happened. Each day the darkness grew in ex- 
pansion until before the end of a week New York 
was as dark as Egypt or Rome. When the demon 
locusts were first reported, he scoffed at the ab- 
surdity. How could sane people become so ter- 
rified as to imagine such creatures. 

As yet Dr. Knowit had seen none of these em- 
missaries of the devil. Their appearance in this 
city was heralded one morning, when it was so 
dark that the electric lights were kept burning on 
the streets as well as in business places and homes. 
No less than a thousand cases were reported that 
first day, of people having been stung. Usually 
there was a cry of terror accompanying the ap- 
pearance of the monsters; for their sting was 
simultaneous with their attack. Their visits were 
strictly on business. 

Dr. Knowit visited the first of his members re- 
ported having been stung, in order that he might 
expostulate with the person who was under ‘Hhe 
strange hallucination.’^ He saw the inflam,ed parts 
of the victim ; he heard the wild ravings ; and re- 
turned to his study perplexed and in deep thought. 
That it was an affliction accompanied from the 
very first symptom by strange hallucination, he 
could not doubt; but that creatures actually ap- 
peared and inflicted the sting, he was not willing 
to credit. 

Some time after this he was sitting in his study 
with his windows open. It was a day of terror. 


THEKE IS A WAY THAT SEEMETH RIGHT. 217 


Business was almost entirely suspended. He could 
every now and then hear a shriek which told him 
in eloquent language, that the disease, whatever 
it was, was spreading. Finally he shut his win- 
dows to keep out the cries of distress; and even 
whilst he returned to his desk, wondering what 
would be the final outcome, he saw emerging from 
the darkness of his room, a form as of a huge bug. 
But it was not a bug ! It had the face of a man ! 
A woman ! It stood on all fours like a horse ! It 
was large, a foot in length! It raised itself upon 
its wings! In his terror he struck at it with a 
book; but in some mysterious way there shot a 
thrill of pain through his uplifted arm even before 
the book touched the monster. He leaped 
straight into the air as if propelled by a super- 
natural power ! He uttered a piercing shriek ! 

When the housekeeper came into the study, at- 
tracted by his cry, she found him lying upon the 
floor and unconscious. His right arm was already 
swollen and his features were distorted with pain 
and terror he had experienced before he lapsed 
into unconsciousness. 


CHAPTEE XXI. 



M g 

“TORMENTED.” | 

w * 


When Dr. Knowit first returned to conscious- 
ness, after his encounter with the demon-locust 
he was suffering great pain. In fact his first 
knowledge that he was still in the flesh was a twinge 
of pain which semed to originate in the spot in his 
hand where he remembered coming in contact with 
the horrid shape. The doctor had heard too many 
accounts from the lips of others who had been vis- 
ited by the same shape to think for a moment that 
the pain was only imaginary. Furthermore the 
swelling of his hand and arm made it all too real. 
He now felt a burning sensation all over his body. 
His whole arm was turning purple. A burning 
thirst which nothing could quench, accompanied 
the pain. As soon as he was able he rose to his 
feet and began to walk, stagger rather, across the 
floor. His servant brought him an eggnog which 
he eagerly snatched from her and swallowed at a 
gulp. 


(218) 


TORMENTED. 


219 


It was in the afternoon that he was bitten or 
stung, (even those who were attacked could not 
tell which it was that caused them the pain). All 
the night folowing the attack he paced the floor, 
the burning, itching sensation not in the least abat- 
ing. The peculiarly horrid shape which he had 
so unexpectedly encountered, wrought upon his 
nervous system until he started with an indescrib- 
able dread at every shadow and every ghost of a 
sound. 

When the first streaks of dawn were perceptible 
on the cold grey which rested over New York bay, 
Dr. Knowit caught sight of the coming light and 
burst into a paroxysm of tears and heart-rend- 
ing sobs ; for the sight of the coming day reminded 
him of better days, when his life was free from the 
anxiety and dread which haunted his sleeping and 
waking hours alike for many days already; for 
reason as he might, and with all the courage he 
could muster, each new phenomenon in nature 
made him fearful. In his paroxysm of weeping he 
threw himself upon his couch in his study in which 
he had spent the night, and when his attendant 
came with a glass of sherry, he motioned her away 
with an air of impatience, and closed his eyes. In 
a few moments more he was very still. At first his 
trusted old servant was alarmed; but she soon 
perceived that he was breathing regularly. Al- 
though a sigh or a low moan escaped him every 
now and then, yet she knew that he was at last 
asleep. 


220 


TORMENTED. 


Sleep has been frequently called death, bnt it 
is whilst we are awake in the ceaseless throb of 
the brain, the exhausting twitch and movement of 
nerve and muscle that we grow old, that we die. 
i In our sleep we enter another world, and when 
sleep is most profound, it is a world curtained by 
shadows and shrouded in unconsciousness; but 
from out that world we come with new hopes and 
aspirations, because we have new vigor. When our 
sleep-world is filled with horrid shapes and con- 
vulsed with pain, there is no world of thought and 
action, no waking-world, which can bring us more 
agony. So after all, sleep is of the earth, earthy; 
for it flies from hell however earnestly its inhabit- 
ants may woo it, and it is estranged from heaven, 
because its inhabitants do not need it. 

Early in the day, whilst Dr. Knowit was still 
sleeping, a messenger came to the door, of the 
parsonage asking that a sealed envelope which he 
bore, be delivered immediately into the hands of 
Dr. Knowit. The faithful servant told the mes- 
senger that it was impossible, that the doctor was 
very sick, and could on no pretence whatever, be 
disturbed. The servant recognized that the note 
and messenger came from the DeLisle home ; and 
she knew too, that whenever of late, the Doctor 
returned from the home of the DeLisle ^s his face 
wore an anxious expression, and he seemed silent 
and sad. 

The one who bore the note knew the Doctor, and 


TOKMENTED. 


221 


it was but natural that he should ask the nature of 
his ailment. Notwithstanding the great number 
who were suffering similarity, there were few who 
were willing to acknowledge that the so-called 
demon-locust was the source of their agony. There 
was a tacit understanding among all that those 
who were stung, or bitten, like the leper of old, 
were under the special span of God. Dr. Kno wit’s 
servant therefore prevaricated when she said that 
the Doctor had been taken suddenly sick, and that 
so far no physician had been able to successfully 
diagnose the disease or prescribe a remedy. 

Not long after the messenger from the DeLisle 
home was gone the physician of Dr. Knowit called 
to see him. The faithful servant had dispatched 
a messenger soon after the cry of agony had 
brought her to the prostrate form of her master. 
It so happened at the time of the coachrhan’s ar- 
rival at the office of the physician that he was out, 
and no one knew where he was. Dr. Knowit ’s 
coachman himself followed the doctor to every 
place where it was thought he might be found. The 
truth of the matter was, the doctor had very many 
patients who were suffering from the same malady 
with which Knowit was afflicted. It is no wonder 
therefore, that it was difficult to tell where he 
might be found. But we have said, the doctor ar- 
rived whilst Knowit was still asleep. Without 
wakening him, he looked over the affected part, 
and with his experience of more than a month at- 


222 


TORMENTED. 


tending those who suffered from the same cause, 
his examination was brief. He left some morphine 
pills, and told the servant to give them, whenever 
the preacher ^s agony would compel it. He also 
left an ointment for the arm and hand, and told 
them that he would return and have a talk with 
the preacher when he was awake. He assured the 
nurse and coachman that the malady in no case, 
had been fatal; but that the suffering was excru- 
ciating. 

Dr. Knowit ’s physician was a man of the world. 
He did not look beyond the narrow confines of his 
science in cases of severest affliction. With the 
great master of the school of materialism, he held 
that ^Hhe evils in the world are in themselves re- 
movable, and will in the end be reduced to narrow 
limits.’^ Diseases may be indefinitely reduced by 
good physical and moral education. The doctor 
admitted that the progress in moral education was 
not as rapid as the progress in science, and the 
practice in morals was far behind what people 
knew. He was reluctant to admit that diseases, re- 
sulting from an immoral life were on the increase, 
but he believed that “on the whole the world was 
getting better. ’ ^ Of course this doctor did not be- 
lieve that Providence had anything to do with 
human suffering and siclmess. There never had 
been an epidemic which was so difficult to be un- 
derstood in its origin and progress as the maladv 
from which Dr. Emowit was suffering. He laughed 


TOKMENTED. 


223 


at the thought that the disease originated with the 
sting or bite of a beast, or insect. How was it 
that those only who were afflicted ever saw the 
venomed creatures ? It was largely a nervous af- 
fliction resulting from local irritation, the cause of 
which could as yet not be determined. 

Here let me say, that the doctor had occasion to 
know more about the demon-locusts soon after Dr. 
Knowit was ‘ ^ taken. ’ ^ He was driving up a quiet 
street one day, on his way from the house of a 
patient whom he had ridiculed for his belief that 
he had seen a horrid shape when he was bitten, 
when suddenly there appeared a creature the like 
of which he had never seen, but which scores of 
his patients had described. The animal man or 
insect, demon, or whatever it was, looked him in 
the face with a pair of the most malicious eyes he 
had ever seen. The doctor was horrified, trans- 
fixd with the stare, but before he could move, or 
utter a word, the awful shape had alighted on his 
knee, and instantly there was a sharp twinge of 
pain which seemed to pierce his very marrow, but 
the creature that had inflicted it was gone, had 
vanished, in fact. With the pain shooting through 
every part of his body, the doctor uttered the 
usual agonizing, terrifying scream which startled 
his driver on the outside and caused him to look in- 
to the vehicle in the greatest alarm. The doctor 
was writhing in pain, and demanded to be taken 
to his office at once. On his arrival he ordered his 


224 


TORMENTED. 


assistant to do everything for him that he had 
ever tried for anyone similarly taken,” but the 
pain continued, and he suffered excruciatingly for 
more than a month. During all this time he did 
not leave his home, and the attendant had the ut- 
most difficulty in restraining him from attempts 
upon his own life. 

We may state here that many who suffered from 
the malady, maddened by pain, sought relief by 
attempting to take their own lives; but through- 
out the continuance of the affliction, not one suc- 
ceeded in committing suicide. This to many seemed 
quite as remarkable as the malady itself. 






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CHAPTER XXII. 


r — 

“A Foolish Son is the Heaviness 
of His Mother.” 

t. ^ I I . ^ 




The author of these pages knows that he does 
not give the state of society the hideous coloring 
it deserves, as he attempts to sketch its condition 
in the pages of this book. It has been his aim 
throughout not to say anything that would have a 
tendency to inflame the passions or smirch the 
morals of any who read. He writes to arouse and 
to warn. 

It is necessary for the reader to know some- 
thing of the DeLisle family whose experiences 
form a part of the narrative of this book. Be it 
known therefore, that Mr. DeLisle was the son of 
a shipchandler who began life as a poor boy who 
years before the opening of this narrative, worked 
in a store on West Street, New York. He was 
honest, frugal and industrious, and in course of 
time commanded the highest wages paid to any 
salesman in his line of business. By and by the 
proprietor became incapacitated from old age. 

15 ( 225 ) 


226 


A FOOLISH SON. 


Then the father of DeLisle managed the business, 
and when the proprietor died he purchased the en- 
tire stock and continued to work where he had be- 
gun as a poor boy. In the course of time his only 
son who is the DeLisle of the story, was born and 
reared in the careful and frugal manner of those 
days. When he was old enough he was sent to col- 
lege, and in due course of time graduated, but not 
with honors ; for, like too many in all our schools 
young DeLisle thought more of his sports than he 
did of his books. He was a member of the college 
baseball team, and although such a position did 
not mean what it means now, DeLisle did some 
traveling from place to place. He fell in with bad 
comlpany, and became dissipated. 

After DeLisle ^s graduation he read law, and be- 
came a corporation lawyer. He settled down to 
business, but he never rid himself of the bad habits 
he had formed at college. He is bound indeed who 
is bound by the force of habit. No chain is strong- 
er, no chords bind as firmily as habit. Drunken- 
ness was not one of his vices, or he would never 
have built up the colossal fortune of which at this 
time he was the master. Lust was his besetting 
sin, but because he was getting rich and the son of 
a well-to-do merchant, every door in society was 
open to him. Stories of his impure life were dis- 
credited by all mothers who had marriageable 
daughters, and so it was that in course of time he 
did marry, and became the husband of a rich, cul- 


A FOOLISH SON. 


227 


tured and virtuous girl. He was never wholly true 
to her. How could he be with every inducement 
to beguile him, bound as he was in the chains of his 
evil habit? His friends and enemies used to say 
that DeLisle was unlike King David, in that he 
was the husband of one wife, but like him, in that 
he was the master of an almbst countless number 
of concubines. He sacrificed many a pure life to 
his lust. He was a liberal patron of the white 
slave market, and paid largely for his prey; yet 
notwithstanding he grew richer and more influen- 
tial with the added years. The fact that a man like 
him can command friends and be influential so 
long as he has money, is in itself, the best comment 
on the state of society. 

Two children came to the home of the DeLisles — 
a son and a daughter. Concerning the daughter 
we have already learned that the love of gold 
brought her to the marriage altar upon the arm 
of a man who was almost old enough to be her 
grandfather. Concerning the son we have said 
nothing. It is now time that we should learn 
something of him. We will pass over the years of 
his boyhood, by saying that he had every oppor- 
tunity, that he was nursed and petted from the 
day that his mother received him from the Father 
of all life. Because he was nursed and petted by 
all, he was spoiled. The pure life of his mother 
was a constraining power which kept him from 
total ruin. Of course he went to college, the best 


228 


A FOOLISH SON. 


in the land. After his course at college he became 
a bookkeeper in his father’s office, and studied the 
ways of Wall Street. After a short time he be- 
came a broker. He had meanwhile fallen into his 
father’s habits; and when his manner of life be- 
came too notoriously corrupt, his father one day 
called him to himself and told him that he would 
be disinherited if he did not mend his ways. He 
told him that he would give him one more chance 
by taking him away from his corrupt associates 
and set him up in business in a distant city. He 
was to be a broker, in constant touch with Wall 
Street. After he would be entirely free from his 
sinful habits and give sufficient evidence of the 
fact, he might come home and take his place at 
his desk, and become more intimately associated 
in his father’s business. There are times in the 
worst of lives when they long to be free from the 
galling bondage of their own lusts, and be what 
they once were. We say, ^‘what they once 
were,” for however deeply the race may have 
fallen, the purity of childhood and youth still car- 
ries with it the stamp of heaven. Such a season 
had now come to the life of young DeLisle. He 
longed to be free from his evil habits. If in that 
moment some warm-hearted Christian had taken 
him to Christ, if there had been some one to point 
him to the ‘‘Lamb of God which taketh away the 
sin of the world,” if some one had told him that 
the Spirit creates anew in Christ Jesus, he would 


A FOOLISH SON. 


229 


have been saved ; but his own father knew nothing 
himself of the cleansing blood. He trusted in his 
own strength, and so far had been decent enough 
to make and keep money. This was all, and in 
this fact he trusted for his salvation. 

Young DeLisle heard his father gratefully. He 
promised to begin over again. His father gave 
him little money with which to make the start, 
but promised to help him so long as he perse- 
vered. His mother at the parting, for the first 
time in many months, took him tenderly in her 
embrace and for some moments wept silently on 
his shoulder. Then she passionately kissed him, 
and sobbingly said, ^‘We shall be so proud of 
you. ^ ’ 

For one whole year young DeLisle held out; 
but in that time he had m(et many young fellows, 
some of them virtuous, many of them ‘Hast^’ in 
the fullest sense of that American slang which 
implies so much. Had he been accustomed to 
choose the pure and good from among those who 
pressed themselves upon him, it would have 
changed his destiny; but such alas! was not his 
habit. True fraternity does not consist in the 
ability to get drunk over the same social glass. 
Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear 
and the dumb understand, but real kindness is 
unselfish. Had young DeLisle been more suspi- 
cious, had he been a better judge of human na- 
ture, he would not have mistaken craft for kind- 


230 


A FOOLISH SON. 


ness. His so-called friends soon led him back to 
his old vices, and in less than two years he was 
farther in sin than ever. 

His father had hired n^en to watch him for one 
whole year, and their reports concerning him were 
so good that he began to have confidence in him. 
He put business in his way which brought him 
money. At the end of the year the father ceased 
his vigilance and took away every incentive to 
careful business practices, and every hope of in- 
creased gain. He wrote him a letter in which he 
stated that the time had now come for him to show 
what he was made of. If he gave full proof of 
his ability he would be asked to come home and 
have all he wished. 

For one a little more ambitious and a little 
stronger morally this would have been an incentive 
to noblest effort, but like calling to one asleep, 
the voice was heard but the meaning of the voice 
was unheeded. Poor DeLisle with all his splendid 
endowments ‘‘sunk from low to lower still. He 
finally sold his office furniture, hired as a book- 
keeper in a distant town and lived as the hum- 
blest. 

The devil treats his servants as best suits his 
policy. The weaker who are at the mercy of their 
every appetite and passion, he usually subjects to 
great penury and want, and finally hides them 
away in a pauper’s grave and the ordinary vaga- 
bond’s hell; the stronger who indulge their every 


A FOOLISH SON. 


231 


passion and appetite only in so far as to suit their 
policy to higher ends, he endows with position 
and wealth. At the end they may lie in a million- 
aire’s mausoleum, but the hotter fires of perdi- 
tion are theirs. 

Young DeLisle was one of the former servants 
of his great master. In his new position he met 
a young and beautiful girl. He enticed her from 
her home, and as we have already learned, after 
causing her to deceive her parents, and bringing 
her to his feet and level, under the spell of fear, 
he married her. We have already heard her own 
story with regard to her subsequent experiences. 
We have seen how he finally under the very 
shadow of his home in New York lay at starva- 
tion’s gate with his wife and innocent child. How 
on the very night of his sister ’s wedding he boldly 
entered the banquet room, and was promptly 
ushered out by his mother who knew him in all 
his rags, the moment she saw him. But she had 
a mother’s heart for her wayward boy. She ac- 
companied him to the stable and there gave him 
in charge of the coachman who took him to his 
bath, whilst she herself hastened to the room he 
once called his own, and whilst the tears coursed 
over her cheeks almost drowning her sight, she 
took from the drawers which had remained un- 
disturbed since the last clean garments had been 
neatly folded away by his own mother’s hands, 
there to await the time when he would come home, 


232 


A FOOLISH SON. 


a new man and in his right mind, the apparel 
necessary to make him comfortable, and carried 
them to the man who was his servant in waiting. 
She ordered that after he was clean and clad, he 
should be served a good warm dinner and then he 
was to be escorted to his room, and ordered to 
bed. Want and dissipation had so reduced him 
that he was ready to do all his mother commanded 
in order that he might have a morsel to keep him 
from starving. 

We can well imagine that after his mother re- 
turned to the banquet room it required all the 
fortitude she could command to retain her place 
and keep what was to her guests a secret, in her 
own heart. So soon as she was able to go to the 
room of her prodigal, she hastened to the door 
and gently knocked. She heard a muffled, ^‘Come^^ 
and at once entered. The electric light was burn- 
ing, her son was in bed with the cover drawn over 
his face, but she could tell by his sobs that he was 
weeping. She herself burst into an agony of 
tears and threw herself upon the form of her boy. 
The only words heard were ‘‘Mother! Mother 
and, ‘ ‘ My son ! My son ! ^ ^ 

Then as if the time were too holy for other lan- 
guage than that, the mother raised herself and 
quietly left the room. 

The tears of sympathy and of love are the spray 
from Eden^s fountains which our first parents 
took with them from the sacred garden, and which 


A FOOLISH SON. 


233 


in all our wandering proclaim us kin to God. To 
his mother, the tears of her wayward son were 
the eloquent language of penitence and shame. To 
him her tears showed that deep down in his moth- 
er’s soul the fountains of holiest atfection still 
welled. That was enough for his tired and sad- 
dened heart. He cared not what of wrath the mor- 
row might bring when he would be compelled to 
see his father. 

I am sure my reader will wonder whether in all 
this he thought not, cared not, for his starving 
wife and babe whom he had left on the sidewalk 
in front of his father’s mansion when he left her 
to secure a morsel of bread. To his honor be it 
said, after his bath and clean clothing, in company 
with the coachman in whose custody his mother 
had placed him, he went to the front of the house 
in quest of his wife and child who that moment 
were being ushered into the coach in which they 
were taken to the doors of Talitha Cumi. Young 
DeLisle knew enough to know that that meant 
food and shelter and comparative comfort for 
them both, and therefore retired to his room at 
the command of the coachman, without a word. 

From all that we have said in this chapter we 
are assured that there was still some good in 
young DeLisle^s nature. If he in those moments 
of heart sickness and suffering because of his 
folly, could have divested himself from the iron 
fetters of his evil habits which for the time made 


234 


A FOOLISH SON. 


no clanking sound or drew with any weight upon 
his poor tired nature, but which clung to him 
nevertheless, he might have risen in the dignity 
of his manhood and asserted himself against all 
the world and all hell. Again we say, why was 
there not some tender soul to point him to the 
‘^Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the 
world r’ 




CHAPTER XXIII. 



Mr. DeLisle Imew from the expression of Mrs. 
DeLisle^s face that their wayward son had re- 
turned. He believed it when he saw the tramp- 
like figure standing at the entrance of the festal 
chamber. He was convinced when he looked into 
his wife^s face, on her return to his side. After 
the guests had all gone, just before her daughter 
and her husband started for their wedding trip, 
she hastily told what Mrs. Gregory feared, namely 
that the tramp who had so unceremoniously thrust 
himaelf between her and the joy of the evening 
was none other than her dissipated brother. Her 
mother tried to convince her as she told her of 
her brother's passionate weeping, that she would 
yet have cause to be proud of her brother, and 
that the fact that he came home on her wedding 
night, was an omen for good. 

She had a more difficult task to calm the im- 
pulsive and passionate husband. He at first in- 
(235) 


236 


A FUGITIVE AND A VAGABOND. 


sisted that the ‘‘tramp must leave his roof at 
once.’^ After much persuasion she prevailed upon 
her husband to change his mind and to give his 
boy one more trial. He said he might remain in 
the house, or room with the coachman; but that 
with his consent he could never appear in the din- 
ing room whilst he was there. If he would secure 
a decent job of any kind and work, saving his 
money and not bringing new shame upon the 
family, he would in time restore him to his place 
in the home. To this he strictly held his mother 
before he gave his consent to the boy^s remaining 
in the home. If his son had had a little m^ore self- 
reliance and moral force such an agreement might 
have helped him; but as it was, let us say right 
here, Mr. DeLisle was saved the trouble of ever 
restoring his son to his place in the home. He 
did try to get work after he had had a few days 
rest. In fact he tried hard; but his father who 
might have made him one of his hired servants, 
gave him no help, and no word of encouragement. 
His mother did not for some reason, intercede for 
him with any of their friends. She did not, be- 
cause she was ashamed to speak of her wayward 
boy. 

Only once did he meet his wife upon the street, 
in company with Grace Dolent. His wife recog- 
nized him and flew to him, crying, “George! oh 
George!’’ 

She introduced him to Grace who had met him 


A FUGITIVE AND A VAGABOND. 


237 


frequently when he was proud and ambitious, and 
when neither dreamed that he would ever be the 
outcast, the sad wreck that stood before them. If 
Grace Dolent ever made a mistake in her life she 
made it when she promised him and his wife that 
day that she would never tell the DeLisle’s that 
George was married, and that his wife was an in- 
mate of Talitha Cumi. Who knows? Perhaps if 
Grace could have prevailed on Mrs. DeLisle to 
acknowledge the beautiful, noble-hearted girl as 
the wife of her son, she might have saved George 
and lengthened the life of his wife. That day as 
they walked along the street they spoke of better 
days to come, and for a little while at least, the 
angel of hope returned to the breast of the sad- 
faced woman who had so lately laid her babe to 
rest. Strange indeed is the irony of fate! Here 
was the son of the wealthy DeLisle the guest of 
his father ^s coachman, in the home of wealth and 
affluence; his own wife was a child of charity in 
the home his own mother helped to found for just 
such people as the wife of her son, and for those 
whose hearts were less pure and noble. 

We cannot dwell upon every detail of George ^s 
stay at the home of his parents in which he could 
not call himlself even a guest. One day after he 
had made considerable effort to find something to 
do, and his mother had given him an eagle, he left 
a note with the coachman. It was handed to his 
mother the first night he did not return to his 


238 


A FUGITIVE AND A VAGABOND. 


room, in the mansion, after the dinner hour in 
the coachman’s quarters; for George was com- 
pelled to dine with the coachman ! This note was 
as follows : 

Dear Mother: — 

I must leave you for a while. I can bear this no 
longer. I could be your coachman, your butler, 
anything, but a tramp, and a sneak, compelled to 
hide away from my own father. I am going back 
from whence I came. When I have a job and 
have made a man of myself you will hear from 
me. Until then, believe me. 

Your loviug son, 

George.” 

The fact that the DeLisle’s lost their son-in- 
law and their daughter was never told George. It 
was never published in the papers. 

Mr. DeLisle’s timely arrival in the South en- 
abled them to keep the account of the loss of Mrs. 
Gregory’s husband from being circulated. If they 
had thought that Mr. Gregory was kidnapped 
they could not have acted more wisely. No re- 
ward was ever otfered except privately to the 
detective, for finding him. 

The loss of Mrs. DeLisle’s daughter almost at 
the same time that she lost her son-in-law told 
heavily upon her. Whenever George saw her she 
seemed paler, sadder. He misinterpreted her looks. 
He thought it was all on account of his conduct, 
but he was afraid, ashamed rather, to ask her. 


A FUGITIVE AND A VAGABOND. 


239 


‘Perhaps if she would have taken her boy into her 
confidence, ^you say,^ he would have been 
strengthened. The very fact that someone looked to 
him for sympathy would have made him feel of 
some use in the world.'' But, let me tell you, you 
did not know George DeLisle. If you could have 
seen him when he returned from college, you 
might have detected marks of dissipation in his 
countenance; but if you would have seen the 
nervous wreck, the twitching muscles, the dejected 
air, you could not have made him your confidant 
even though you had been his mother. 

Perhaps no one save Dr. Knowit would have 
found out about the loss of Mr. and Mrs. Gregory 
had it not been for the woman with the familiar 
spirit, whom the Dr. and Mrs. DeLisle consulted. 
She was neither noble enough to be the confidant 
of anyone, nor could she see that her womanhood 
bound her to secrecy. She could not refrain from 
telling almost every one who came to her apart- 
ments, of the loss and the part she had taken in 
solving (deepening rather, we should say), the 
mystery. Those whom she told had more thought 
and respect for Mrs. DeLisle than to wound her 
by prying into the awful sorrow which they saw 
was sapping the very life of the once proud and 
dignified woman. They saw only too well that her 
sorrow was too keen to be healed by anything 
they could say or do, so they waited for the solu- 
tion of the mystery. It is true, “Nothing comes 


240 


A FUGITIVE AND A VAGABOND. 


to US too soon except sorrow. ’ ’ It is likewise true 
that sorrow oft, is the last guest to depart. It 
seemed as if sorrow had come to stay and fatten 
at the board of the DeLisle’s; for whilst Mrs. De- 
Lisle was in deepest sorrow over the loss of her 
daughter and her husband she was handed the 
note written by her boy announcing his departure. 

Two weeks had now passed since the evening 
Mrs. Gregory was kidnapped and the DeLisle’s 
had not been able to find a trace of her. The de- 
tectives believed that somewhere in their own lit- 
tle city there was a robber den, but where, they 
had never been able to discover. The mystery of 
it all was that in a number of cases those who had 
been reported lost, and for whom they had made 
search, after a while came back to their homes, 
and refused to give any account of their where- 
abouts during the time their friends had searched 
for them. The chief of detectives in an interview 
which he had with Mr. DeLisle in New York, a 
few days after the loss of this daughter, distinctly 
told Mr. DeLisle that he believed that his people 
would turn up of their own accord, if they only 
had the patience to wait. He promised that in the 
meantime he and his men would make every effort 
to find the lost. 

It was during the absence of her dearest 
earthly treasures that the plague of the demon- 
locusts made their appearance in New York. It 
was more than two months since they first began 


A FUGITIVE AND A VAGABOND. 241 

their torments in Asiatic and European countries ; 
but now the number of patients was steadily on 
the increase in every part of America. Business 
was paralyzed, and men at first tried to flee as 
from the plague; but when they found that there 
was no place on or under the earth which shielded 
them from the horrid visitations they became 
more calm, but still they dreaded the encounter 
as they would death itself. 

It was during these awful months that Mr. De- 
Lisle was brought home from his office in an am- 
bulance. He had read and heard much about the 
demon-locusts, but he had ridiculed those who 
spoke about the possibility of such monsters as 
were described by those who had encountered 
them. On this particular day he was in his office 
with two others, when without the door opening, 
or any audible sound, suddenly there appeared 
one of these awful shapes which seemed to grow 
whilst they beheld. All three made a rush for the 
door, and in that very effort each saw the monster 
pass before their eyes, and as they struck to keep 
it out of their faces, the usual thrill of pain passed 
through their bodies. 


16 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


mu 


“The Mark of the Beast.” 






Although no one was visited by the demion- 
locusts in the home over which Grace Dolent pre- 
sided, there were other calamities, some of them 
the result of sins committed, and some of them 
the result of Man’s Inhumanity to Man.” 

The reader of these pages remembers the meet- 
ing of many millionaries and how they determined 
to form a gigantic combination by which to con- 
trol all buying and selling in the world. This 
compact was formed, its iron-clad rules were 
drafted, and everything was in readiness some 
years before the events of this chapter occurred. 

There were many reasons why the enforcing of 
the compact was delayed, why the gigantic ma- 
chinery that was to crush and grind the life out 
of all who tried to assert and maintain their man- 
hood and their liberty of conscience, was not set 
in motion. One reason was because the capital- 
( 242 ) 


THE MARK OF THE BEAST. 


243 


ists were not yet sufficiently hardened to allow 
their scheme to go into effect. 

No one Imows how long the petrified forests 
were in process of formation. Every one does 
know that forests are not created to turn into 
stone. As stones they have ceased to be wood or 
to subserve any of the uses of wood. Subject to 
transforming environment and with no forces to 
deliver them from such an environment, their 
leaves dropped from the branches, their trunks 
were prostrated into elements which transformed 
them. So it is with men. Let them once be given 
over to the hardening processes of their lusts and 
greed, and they are transformed into the emis- 
saries of Satan; and become like him, losing all 
that is gentle in their natures. 

Not even once in a while is a sinner found who 
will plunge into the dark, gurgling waters of 
moral and spiritual blackness from any great 
heighths of purity and self-respect. Where such 
seems to be the case it is really not so. The moor- 
ings have been abandoned, that which anchored 
to right and worth has been cut loose silently and 
gradually, and then contrary to the victims own 
calculations, he has been compelled to take the 
plunge much to his own discomfiture. He goes 
down into depths which were by himself un- 
fathomed and is put to extremities of evil of 
which, in his sober moments, he thought himself 
incapable. As with individuals, so it is with 


244 


THE MARK OF THE BEAST. 


liunxan society. As the world becomes more 
wicked, the bars, the restraining forces are taken 
out of the way. 

There was licentiousness and crime as black as 
that of ancient Sodom and Gomorrah, Pompeii 
and Herculaneum in the most cultured civilization 
of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries; but 
the forces of evil wore a veneer, the burning lava 
cast upon the earth from the depth of hell was 
covered by the virtues of society which chilled and 
checked their scorching, destructive power. But 
it is different now. The sullen black stream is 
made to glow by the social atmosphere which fans 
it, feeds it, into livid flame. Among the active 
causes bringing about such a state of affairs was 
a boastful and self-sufficient science that needed 
no revelation and no divine providence, which 
negatived the doctrines of faith. In the place of 
the faith of our fathers there came a demoniacal 
spiritism which not only sought to call back to 
communion with earth the spirits of ancestors, 
but which also boasted of being able to separate 
the souls of the living from their bodies and of 
sending them with the speed of light to the utter- 
most parts of the earth. Thus with ruthless hands 
science sought to rend the veil which separates 
the material from the spiritual universe, the 
natural from the supernatural. The investigations 
of science would have been all right had this 
science paid heed to the instruction of divine in- 


THE MAEK OF THE BEAST. 


245 


spiration. Instead of this it refused and rejected 
the study of the Bible; nor did it heed its warn- 
ings, and so became the dupe of demons when it 
thought itself led and inspired by the good of past 
ages. Had there not come this ‘Hailing away 
first’ ^ “the Man of Sin” could not have revealed 
himself. Human conceit and philosophies which 
explain away divine revelation are among 
the most potent forces for evil, and prepare men 
for all sorts of hallucinations, excesses and 
crimes. 

Because this was so there could be put into 
operation a crushing, grinding machinery which 
was as insensible to the cry of despair as it was 
to the wail of agony. Long years already trusts 
and unions had been “in politics,” and legislated 
or prevented legislation as they thought their 
ends best served. Much had been done to correct 
evils which these organizations had perpetrated; 
but the fines and penalties which one branch of the 
government imposed were remitted by another; 
and in this way the iniquity itself furnished much 
material for political orators and much mx^ney 
for carrying municipal and national elections. 
The masses who had it in their power to elect 
clean men to office and support them in attempted 
reformations, boasted loudly of what they were 
to do. At the same time they groaned beneath 
their burdens. But nearly always when the op- 
portunity came to rid themselves of the burden 


246 


THE MARK OF THE BEAST. 


they voted exactly as their fathers had done be- 
fore them, until now these forces were utterly be- 
yond their control. The creatures of evil which 
(had been nursed by political parties and sup- 
ported by their legislation, now aided by the pow- 
ers of hell, developed into wild beasts in ferocity 
and rapaciousness, and into serpents in cunning 
and venom. ‘‘The small and the great, the rich 
and the poor, and the free and the bond^’ (Reve- 
lation 13-16) were compelled to receive “a mark 
on their right hand or on their forehead, that no 
one should be able to buy or sell except he who 
had the mark, the name of the beast or the num- 
ber of his name.’’ 

So in the end there is a union of business and 
of religion. A religion has come that a man can 
take with him into his business. It is a religion 
which allows robbery, plunder in business; but it 
is not the religion of the meek and lowly Christ. 
It is a religion whose high priest is the devil, 
whose preacher is the “false prophet,” whose re- 
ligious acts are robbery and murder and whose 
results are starvation and death. 

Perhaps the rich merchants who received the 
“mark of the beast” felt that they had over- 
reached themselves and brought upon themselves 
a system which insured them “fabulous wealth” 
for this life and damnation for the life to come. 
Perhaps they were so totally deceived by the 
blandishments of the “false prophet” and his 


THE MARK OF THE BEAST. 


247 


servants that they received the mark as the hypno- 
tist allures and inspirits to evil, or like beasts, 
forcibly branded for the slaughter. Be this as it 
may, the words of the great Apostle to the Gen- 
tiles were now literally fulfilled : ‘ ‘ In the last days 
grievous times shall come for men shall be lovers 
of their own selves, lovers of money, boastful, 
haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthank- 
ful, unholy, without natural affection, inplacable, 
slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers 
of good — holding a form of godliness, having de- 
nied the powers thereof.’^ (II Tim. 3:2; 3-5). 

For years each Trust and Union has been com- 
pelled to suffer at the hands of every other Trust 
and Union. Then the heaviest burden fell on the 
man who belonged to no Trust or Union; for he 
had no opportunity to reimburse himself by over- 
reaching and plundering his neighbor through or- 
ganized force. Now matters became still worse. 
All he produced must be used by himself unless he 
is willing to receive the ‘ ‘ Mark of the beast. ’ ^ He 
must live on his own products in kind. He cannot 
even sell to his unmarked neighbor, for the hellish 
skill of the beast ferrets out and promptly pun- 
ishes every such action. 

Those who had received the mark of the beast 
and were in the union, now had their hearts turned 
to adamant. They no longer made apology for 
their robberies through gifts and charities. They 
paid no more heed to the cries of those who reaped 


248 


THE MARK OF THE BEAST. 


their fields than to the moans of the beggar by. 
the way. Those who had not the ‘^mark of the 
beast’’ could neither buy nor beg. 

Perhaps the awfulness of the situation can be 
best seen from an individual and detailed ex- 
ample. A young woman was suffering from a 
burning fever in the home of Grace Dolent. In 
this home not one of the inmates had been willing 
to receive the mark — and so they could buy no 
medicine for the sufferer. The hand of charity 
which had so often ministered to them before was 
closed against them. 

Toward the evening of a hot afternoon, one of 
the worst a patient had yet experienced, Grace 
Dolent went to a dealer for a piece of ice, as much 
as she could carry in the basket on her arm. 

‘^Were you not served this morning,” was his 
first question. She replied, ”We have had no ice 
all this month. I do not know what we shall do 
during July and August.” 

‘^It is evident that you do not belong to the 
Union, and since you do not, it is impossible for 
me to sell or give you any ice. I know who you 
are. I respect you and your work, but our orders 
are strict.” 

She replied: ‘‘I would not ask you for ice but 
we have a very sick woman who is burning with 
fever. ’ ’ 

‘‘Join the Union, and you can have all the ice 
you need. All the dealers are in the Union. It 


THE MARK OF THE BEAST. 


249 


will only be a few days more until every commod- 
ity in the market will become the exclusive prop- 
erty of the Union. So you had better receive the 
mark now and join us. We intend to be just as 
charitable as the church has ever been; but of 
course this charity will begin strictly at home and 
continue at home. Do you understand? In fact 
we intend to have a universal religion. We will 
make a religion of our business. We will as- 
semble in the name of our leader and pray to him 
and in his name. Those of us who pray will also 
have his image or his picture in our offices and 
pray to this image or picture as a great part of 
the Church has prayed to the images and pictures 
of its saints and gods. This is not idolatry. It 
will be as easy and pious for us to pray to the 
image of one man as it has been for the Church 
to pray to the images of scores of men and wo- 
men. ’ ^ 

Grace Dolent replied, ^‘Neither I nor any in our 
home can take the mark of which you speak, nor 
can we join your Union. It is idolatry, and idol- 
atry in its worst form. If we must perish we will 
perish in His name; but we cannot afford to buy 
the comforts of life or even life itself at such a 
price.’’ 

‘Wery well,” said the dealer. ‘‘You can do as 
you see fit, but. Madam, you must remember we 
are living in a period when each man must look 
out for himself. I can sell you no ice until you 


250 


THE MARK OF THE BEAST. 


can show the mark of which I speak, stamped in 
your forehead, and the hand which already bears 
the mark can minister to your necessities whether 
you have money or not. Our master does not in- 
tend to keep the necessities of life from any one 
who has the mark. We are rich and we intend 
to be as charitable as any system or religion that 
ever existed in the world. Thousands are joining 
us every day and you will, or die. In a few months 
from now there will not be anybody in the world 
who does not bear the mark.’’ 

Thus it was that Grace Dolent was compelled 
to return to her suffering ward* without a par- 
ticle of ice to cool her fevered tongue. Thus it 
was that with all our boasted development in the 
sciences and the arts, with all our charitable insti- 
tutions, men were being transformed from the 
image of God into the image of the devil. 

It is not in the province of this book to describe 
the age in which all these hellish plans came into 
fruition. In fact the pen shrinks from such a task. 
The pen of inspiration has, however, in a few 
awful sentences described that period which, ^‘for 
the elect sake,” the Master himself has promised 
shall be shortened. 

So Grace Dolent returned without ice and with 
a sad heart, sad because she could get no ice for 
one who suffered, and sadder still because of the 
thoughts that crowded upon her. She recognized 
how near to — and how ripe for judgment the world 


THE MASK OF THE BEAST. 


251 


really was but she did not know that her own de- 
liverance was so near at hand. This deliverance 
remains to be described in the final chapter of 
this history. As she went, she thought of the 
words of the hynm she had so often sung, the 
hymn which had so often cheered and comforted 
her in sorrow: — 

‘ ‘ Even the hour that darkest seemeth 
Will He his changeless goodness prove. 
From the gloom His brightness streameth, 
God is wisdom, God is love.’’ 


CHAPTER XXV. 


I “The Treasurers of Wickedness p 
I Profit Nothing.” | 

i 


Any one entering the “haven of rest^’ of the 
“blue-eyed three” would have been impressed 
with the orderly arrangement of the rooms, and 
in fact, of everything upon which the eye could 
rest. The beds upon which the patients reposed 
when there were any, which lately had been al- 
most constantly the case, were models of con- 
venience and comfort. When these same beds 
were not in use all that could be seen of them was 
the finely polished oak panels upon which the 
springs rested. In addition to the oak panels 
which secured and supported the beds, there were 
others just as finely finished, which formed the 
doors to toilet and bath rooms, and which opened 
by pressing a button under the soft velvet carpet 
and rugs which in places covered the polished 
floors. The oxyhydrogen lights softly glowed in 
the ceilings of these rooms. In every little cham- 
ber there was au oxygen generator which venti- 
( 252 ) 


THE TREASUREES OF WICKEDNESS. 


253 


lated and kept pure the atmiosphere. Fans ran 
by motors kept running by electricity from the 
decomposing water, made the chambers cool and 
kept them dry. Curtains which unfolded with the 
opening of each bed gave an air of elegance and 
privacy to each patient in the same apartment. 
The large underground structure had its ante- 
room of which we have already spoken as the 
place where patients entered upon the large iron 
disk ; it had its parlor in the other end of the place 
partitioned from the other rooms. 

Mr. and Mrs. Gregory were under the same 
roof, whilst each deemed the other far away and 
in the deepest trouble, if alive at all. Mrs. Greg- 
ory for three days, was semi-conscious of her sur- 
roundings, but in all this time she was not forget- 
ful of her strange fate which had separated her 
from her husband. At the end of that time her 
mind was clear and she could speak, but inas- 
much as the nurse enjoined quiet, and told her 
that some one had hurt her, and that she was af- 
terwards picked up on the street and brought to 
this place, she imagined that she might be in a 
hospital. Of course the nurse did all she could to 
deepen that impression. She was also told that 
some one of her family was momentarily ex- 
pected. It was thus that Mrs. Gregory was in- 
duced to speak little and ask few questions. She 
was also told that her husband who had evidently 
fallen among thieves and who had been picked up 


254 


THE TEEASUKERS OF WICKEDNESS. 


by some good Samaritan, was in the same hospital 
in which she was being so carefully nursed. She 
said she was told that he had been very sick ; but 
was now well, and that permission was given him 
to see his wife in the parlor into which she was 
about to be ushered. 

Of course Mrs. Gregory was overjoyed at this 
announcement, and with difhculty composed her- 
self as she was being ushered into the parlor. 
Could it be true, that the husband whom she had 
given up for lost, was really alive and well? The 
news was too good to be true ! Perhaps after all, 
the same fate which had brought her here, was 
unkind, and would prove the story of her nurse a 
myth. After all, what place was this which seemed 
so far removed from the light of the sun that it 
was necessary to keep it illuminated with arti- 
ficial light? And then too, with the exception of 
the whirring sounds which constantly greeted her, 
the place was in a quiet that seemed unearthly. 
Whilst these last thoughts were for the thou- 
sandth time since she regained consciousness, 
passing through her brain, the door of the cosily 
and daintily furnished parlor seemed to open of 
itself, and she beheld her husband who gave her 
a startled stare, (he had not been told of her pres- 
ence, simply that someone wished to meet him in 
the parlor), as if he were doubtful whether he was 
not being deceived by his own vision. 

The nurse quietly withdrew, and the happy pair 


THE TREASURERS OF WICKEDNESS. 


255 


were left to themselves to wonder at each other’s 
presence, and to compare notes with regard to the 
strange misfortune which had separated them and 
which now seemed to have unwillingly and un- 
wittingly blundered in permitting them to meet 
here. A great burden was of course, lifted from 
their hearts as they gazed into each other’s faces 
and realized that their meeting was real and in 
the flesh. They now for the first time since their 
separation both realized that the other was still 
alive and well. This in itself, was a great satis- 
faction. Of all the sorrows of life there is none 
more poignant than that which arises from sepa- 
ration which has in it the strong element of doubt 
as to whether those from whom we are separated 
are really still alive. 

Mr. Gregory told his wife all he had learned 
from his first acquaintance with the man who had 
nursed him, or rather waited upon him when he 
was first conscious of his surroundings. Mrs. 
Gregory had less to tell, because her experiences 
though much like her husbands, were less vividly 
before her mind. From what they had both ex- 
perienced they concluded that they were in a rob- 
ber-den. The men who owned and managed the 
den were evidently shrewd, cultured and highly 
educated. Their equipment bore marks of all this 
everywhere the unfortunate Gregories looked. 
Just what would be the price they would ask to re- 
store them to liberty they did not venture to 


256 


THE TREASUKEES OF WICKEDNESS. 


guess, but they had no doubt that it would be the 
utmost these bad men who had them wholly in 
their power, might exact. The unfortunate pair 
resolved as they sat in the trimi little parlor, that 
it money could at all restore them to freedom and 
their friends, they would sacrifice any amount to 
accomplish it. It was plain that their money had 
brought them to this refined robber den. They 
realized too that money, much money, must take 
them away. For the first time in their lives they 
realized to what straits money may bring its pos- 
sessors, what crimes it leads men to commit; and 
that withal it formed the cord of gold with which 
those in the depth of misfortune may extricate 
themselves, the clew which when carefully fol- 
lowed leads out into light and liberty. They saw 
how money with all the crime it breeds and all the 
criminals it arrests; with all the woes it causes 
end the weal it brings; with all the tyrannies it 
engenders and all the fetters it breaks; the op- 
pressions it maintains and the liberties it pur- 
chases; with all its chances and its changes, its 
constancy and its falsity, was now the cause of 
all their misery; as it had been the factor in much 
of their former happiness. 

They did not know as they sat there and in a 
quiet way spoke of their immediate future, that 
the modest nurse who had ushered Mrs. Giregory 
into the parlor to which one of the blue-eyed three 
had brought her husband, was now intently lis- 


THE TREASURERS OF WICKEDNESS. 


257 


tening and trying to catch every word of their con- 
versation. To them she was invisible although 
she was very near. She was to get data for those 
with whom she worked. 

The Gregories knew that there was but one way 
for communion with the outside world, and that 
was through their captors and those who were in 
league with them. Whilst they were in the midst 
of their conversation as to what would ultimately 
be done with them, a man whom neither of them 
had seen before, made his appearance in the door- 
way of the parlor. He had come so noiselessly that 
they were neither of them conscious of his ap- 
proach until he stood before them. He introduced 
himself as the manager of the place, and said that 
he had been informed by the doctor and the nurses 
that their patients had recovered, and were ready 
to be discharged. He said he knew that they were 
both happy for this information, and that if they 
were ready to settle the bill, they would be es- 
corted to the train that very evening. Mrs. Greg- 
ory wept for joy as she thought of liberty and of 
her home in the North. Mr. Gregory was com- 
pletely cowed and manifested none of the bravado 
for which he was so famous in Wall Street. He 
said he was willing to pay what was reasonable. 

To this his tormentor replied that they had the 
best physician in the haven of rest^^ to be found 
anywhere. His patients could also see and bear 
testimony that only the best was good enough for 
17 


258 


THE TREASUREES OF WICKEDNESS. 


those who were so fortunate as to be guests or 
patients in the haven. All this being considered, 
together with their ability to pay, he thought 
$20,000 a very modest sum, and that he had ac- 
cordingly made out the bill for this amount. This 
included everything. 

Mr. Gregory was about to fly into a towering 
rage; but his wife^s touch upon his arm brought 
him to himself. He promptly replied that he was 
willing to draw up his check for that amount pro- 
vided he was restored to his friends alive and 
well. 

With a twinkle in his eye, the other said he 
would get pen and paper at once, and went away. 
When he returned there were two others with 
him who were dressed exactly alike to the very 
tie, and cut of collar. They each of the three, had 
blue eyes, and moustaches and hair of the same 
color and cut alike. In fact it seemed as if the 
one had multiplied himself to three. The first of 
them introduced one of the two others as a no- 
tary public. He bowed low and then actually pro- 
duced his seal and commission as notary. He also 
produced a mortgage regularly drawn up and 
ready for execution, for the sum of $20,000 on 
the home which Mr. Gregory had recently pur- 
chased and furnished as the future home for him- 
self and bride. The mortgage was read, accu- 
rately describing his property in New York. Mr. 
G. promptly signed it and laid the pen aside with 


THE TREASUKEES OF WICKEDNESS. 


259 


a sigh of relief. He still thought himself master 
of the situation. 

The man who introduced the other two, now 
said, ‘‘We require an oath of all who come here 
that they will never in any way mention anything 
of their experiences, or take any measures to 
avert payment of any promises or papers they 
have given.’’ The notary then read the oath. It 
was most solemn. The proprietor said that it was 
not the solemnity of the oath which as a rule 
bound to secrecy; but the fact that they were in 
the habit of making it clear to their people that 
if they violated their secret or did anything to 
avert obligations they would be executed. He went 
on to say, “We have our own code of laws here, 
and the crime of perjury is punished with death. 
We make it plain to our inmates that even if they 
would secure our arrest, we have our people in 
six of the chief cities of the United States, and 
they see that our laws are executed.” 

Mr. Gregory said, “I will never take the oath.” 
He spoke the words slowly, deliberately, as if he 
weighed their import. 

The reply came quickly when the third of “the 
blue-eyed three” who up to this time had been a 
silent spectator, stepped forward and pressed an 
unseen button with his foot which sent a current 
of electricity through the chair upon which Mr. 
Gregory was sitting, which rendered him rigid 
and helpless. At the same instant he flashed a 


260 


THE TREASUREKS OF WICKEDNESS. 


long dirk-like knife before the eyes of the unfor- 
tunate Gregory. His wife uttered a piercing 
scream and sank to the floor unconscious. The 
nurse instantly appeared from somewhere and 
caught up the unconscious form of the woman and 
administered stimulants. The current of electric- 
ity was already diverted from the chair in which 
Mr. Gregory writhed, and the man with the dirk 
was waved aside by the ‘^proprietor’’ of the den. 

“We will give you until five o’clock this even- 
ing. Then you will either take the oath with your 
wife or you will die with her. We mean what we 
say and do what we promise in every case.” These 
words were spoken by the “proprietor” as the 
three turned upon their heels and promptly dis- 
appeared from the parlor, the door swinging be- 
hind them. 

By this time the unconscious woman was re- 
stored to sensibility. The nurse continued at her 
side, showing her every attention and anticipat- 
ing her every want. A glass of sherry was also 
sent to Mr. Gregory which he waved aside and 
angrily told the waiter who was none of the “blue- 
eyed three,” to be gone. In a few moments more 
the nurse also left them, and they were alone once 
more, not a soul being visible an3rwhere, the door 
of the parlor shut like a vice just after a partition 
of solid oak came majestically gliding across the 
farther end of the place and the “blue-eyed” dis- 
appeared in a closet. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 




“VAIN IS THE HELP OF MAN” 


Mrs. DeLisle in every trouble that came to her 
heart always first turned to Dr. Knowit. For some 
reason he could still the storm of passion and 
calm the surges of sorrow in many souls besides 
that of Mrs. DeLisle. In this strange power what- 
ever it was, lay the secret of the Doctor’s 
strength in his congregation and among men gen- 
erally. If any of them would have been asked to 
tell wherein his strange power lay, none of them 
could have told. 

There are some people in the world who profess 
to be our friends, and they hasten to us at the first 
reports of our ills. They offer us their sympathy, 
but their very presence somehow annoys and 
worries, frets and irritates. There are others 
whose very presence inspires confidence and gives 
peace in the hour of gloomy foreboding and actual 
suffering and misfortune. 

Dr. Knowit never prayed with his people in 
( 261 ) 


262 


VAIN IS THE HELP OF MAN. 


their homes. In public worship he read the pray- 
ers of the church; but notwithstanding his prac- 
tices his people turned to him. It was therefore 
natural that Mrs. DeLisle should send for him 
as soon as her husband was visited by the strange 
affliction from which Dr. Knowit, unknown to Mrs. 
DeLisle, was suffering. But when she learned 
that the Doctor could not come, she sent for Grace 
Dolent. She always held Grace in the highest 
esteem. It is true, she did not make a bosom 
friend of her, because Grace was poor, and con- 
sequently ‘^beneath her socially.’’ Then too, Mrs. 
DeLisle always maintained that Grace was ‘‘over 
pious.” She always talked religion and could 
weave a promise or rebuke from the Bible into 
every conversation and circumstance in life. She 
believed with Dr. Knowit, that Grace was “a 
literalist,” although she did not exactly know 
what he meant but she did know that Grace took 
the Bible just as it was written and maintained 
that it said what it meant and meant what it said. 

In what Mrs. DeLisle believed the greatest af- 
fliction of her life, she was glad that Grace so 
readily responded to her summons, for such the 
message Mrs. DeLisle sent to Grace, really was. 
She felt that she must have someone near who 
could comfort her and in whom she had confi- 
dence. 

Mr. DeLisle was not the first patient of the kind 
that Grace had seen. Among the tenements where 


VAIN IS THE HELP OF MAN. 


263 


the girl constantly visited, there were many vi- 
cious, and the vicitims were numerous. What im- 
pressed her, and made her feel all the more 
humble, was the fact that patients in her presence 
seemed at first more violently suffering; but when 
she prayed, the sufferers in every instance became 
calm, and seemed to have a respite from the 
strange burning and itching sensations. 

Because Mrs. DeLisle implored Grace to remain 
with her she spent many weeks in her home, going 
to Talitha Cumi almost daily, it is true, so that 
she did not lose her grip upon affairs in the home, 
but she spent her nights and many hours of her 
days with Mrs. DeLisle. During all this time she 
saw the master of the house almost constantly as 
he wandered from room to room and from floor 
to floor in his commodious home. In his calmer 
moments she read to him from the Bible and good 
books and implored him to put his trust in Christ 
for full salvation. 

Mr. DeLisle from the earliest years of his man- 
hood, had always been charmed by the presence 
of a woman. We have already seen how suscep- 
tible he was to the influence of womanhood. Now 
that he felt that the fountains of his life were be- 
ing sapped by pain and that strange fatigue 
which attended every movement of his body and 
every exertion of his brain, he still manifested the 
same inborn interest in the opposite sex. It is 
true, as the fountains of his energy were being ex- 


264 


VAIN IS THE HELP OF MAN. 


hausted, lie felt the fires of his passion smoulder 
and die into the ashes of his spent manhood. 

For some years, Grace Dolent had almost con- 
stantly visited his home in the interests of her 
work. In those days when his own daughter was 
just blushing into wom,anhood and his son was an 
innocent, but an already spoiled child, Mr. DeLisle 
led what may well be called a fast life ; but Grace 
Dolent was the one fruit of virtue and beauty 
which he always felt, grew far beyond the reach 
of his passion or the touch of his blandishments. 
In fact he felt absolutely uneasy in her presence. 
Her calm clear eyes seemed to look into the depths 
of his guilty soul, and so he feared her. Even now 
in his distress, he avoided her look as does the 
prisoner avert his eyes in the presence of the 
judge when his guilt is declared and he stands 
tremblingly awaiting his sentence. 

Though she prayed for him as earnestly as for 
any she visited in those awful days, and the demon 
of his suffering gave him respite as he listened 
to the voice of her supplication, he found no per- 
manent peace. When he was calm and she talked 
to him of the deeper needs of his soul, and re- 
peated to him the words of her Master to Nico- 
demus, he too was compelled in his darkened un- 
derstanding and hardened heart to ask with the 
Rahhi, ‘‘How can a man he bom when he is old?” 

For several long months Mr. DeLisle suffered 
excruciatingly — at times more severely than at 










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HE .JESTED.” — He Is ‘’Stuno.” After Suffering Ex:crucmating Pains He Gets Welu; Put He Does Not 

Kepe’Nt. Fiie Second Half of the Picture Shows How He .Jested and 
Mocked as He Pecalled His Eormer Agony. — P age 



VAIN IS THE HELP OF MAN. 


265 


others; but the swelling in his limbs finally sub- 
sided and the burning sensation in his body 
ceased. At the end of five mlonths he seemed 
strong and well as ever. When he first again ap- 
peared in his place of business and in his old 
haunts, he was greeted by many who had suffered 
like himself. When these people spoke of their 
experiences they did it Oth many a jest. Now 
that the demon of their agony was withdrawn they 
felt free to mock and jest, not thinking that in 
such a moment as they knew not He who had 
opened the gates of perdition might allow new 
monsters to visit them. 

We must not forget Dr. Knowit who all this time 
was still a sufferer in his home. When Grace Do- 
lent first heard that he was a victim of the demon- 
locusts, she retired to her own chamber and wept 
bitterly. She prayed long and earnestly for her 
pastor who she felt, had never yet experienced 
saving grace within himself. She felt too, that she 
could not call on him. She however felt free to send 
him a note in which she expressed her deep sorrow 
‘‘at this strange unearthly affliction.’’ She com- 
mended him to the mercy of her Heavenly Father 
without whose notice not a sparrow falls to the 
ground and who is in every trial of our life a sure 
refuge and help. 

She felt that she could not say that she hoped 
the experience of his higher spiritual life would 
be helped, for she believed that so far no germs 


266 


VAIN IS THE HELP OF MAN. 


of the Spirit’s life had either found root or place 
in his soul. She felt with a sad heart, that Dr. 
Ivnowit like the rich young man in the days of her 
Master’s sojourn upon the earth, who had kept all 
the commandments from his youth, was a good il- 
lustration of how near one could come to the king- 
dom of God and still linger without. 

Dr. Knowit, partly because of his suffering and 
partly because of the humiliation he felt at his af- 
fliction, never answered Grace Dolent’s note. At 
times he felt on the point of sending for her, but 
for some reason he did not. For three long months 
he paced his study by day and by night, almost 
constantly, until his shoulders acquired a stoop 
as of an old man, his lip lost its proud curl, the 
fire died from his eye, and his manly form shrunk 
to a mere shadow of its former self. 

During all this time his church, like many 
others, was closed. The people seemed to have 
no heart to go to church. The meetings in some of 
the missions were never closed by night or day. 
Here and there a church held services as in days 
gone by, and its godly pastor exhorted his people 
to live near to Him who is our refuge fortress, 
and who is able to deliver from ‘Ghe noisome pes- 
tilence” and from ^Hhe destruction that wasteth 
at noonday.” 


CHAPTER XXVII. 




“THE SNARE IS BROKEN AND i 
WE ARE ESCAPED.” | 


We have already seen that the attention of the 
local detectives was once before called to the peo- 
ple and house in which the blue-eyed three 
maintained their haven of rest.’^ Mr. Gregory 
was not the only one who disappeared under the 
very shadow of the big hotels which kept their 
vigil by the sea for any and all travelers from the 
North or from anywhere, who sought rest and 
recreation in the milder climate of Florida. At 
one time the finger of suspicion was pointed to the 
hotel in which Mr. and Mrs. Gregory stopped ; but 
the people of the inn were so ready to aid in the 
search and so cheerfully threw open every nook 
and comer of the house, and seemed as eager as 
the searchers to have the missing one found, that 
there was no doubt in the mind of the searchers 
that the house had anything to do with the disap- 
pearance. 

In the case above, every house was searched on 
( 267 ; 


268 


THE 8NAEE IS BROKEN. 


the avenue where the ‘ ‘ blue-eyed three lived; but 
largely for the sake of the last place. Every nook 
and comer was searched, even to the cellar; but 
the neatly cemented floor did not bear the slight- 
est suspicion of being anything else than the floor 
of a well-kept cellar. The plate in the floor was 
immediately under a water spigot and was with- 
out doubt the drain for the waste water. 

Mr. DeLisle no more than the friends of Mr. 
Gregory, was willing to allow the disappearance 
of Mr. Gregory and his wife to remain shrouded 
in mystery so long as there was the least possibil- 
ity of finding out what had become of them. The 
most skillful detective agency in New York was 
put upon the case. Had the ^‘blue-eyed three’’ re- 
mained content with the possession of Mr. Greg- 
ory they might have kept their secret ; but in the 
capture of Mrs. G. they made a fatal mistake. The 
detectives began in New York. They found the 
Pullman conductor who had Mrs. Gregory on his 
train, and from him they learned the place where 
Mrs. G. abandoned the train, and by one of their 
number, a colored man, playing the stranded negro 
among the negroes of the town in which house was 
housed Mrs. G. for several hours, he finally 
learned after a week’s stay, how less than a month 
before one of their number received a five dollar 
bill, ‘Hor doi’n’ nothen a’ tall but keep’en a white 
gen ’men wife a foo hours in ’is house.” 

He learned from the cab-man that he drove the 


THE SNARE IS BROKEN. 


269 


party to the cars and received two dollars when 
the rate was fifty cents. The porter on that even- 
ing train south, gave the details of the plot not 
knowing that it was a plot. He often saw the par- 
ticular one of the ‘‘blue-eyed three’’ and always 
received a handsome fee from him whenever he 
rode in his car. He gave the account to the 
stranded negro who was in this case trying to find 
out whether he had better try for a job as porter, 
and what he could expect in fees. 

Finally, and all within a week, he hired to a 
livery man as a cab driver and soon learned much 
about the “blue-eyed three” and their habits. In 
a few days he himself had delivered an ordinary 
looking passenger at the door. This individual 
was looking for a boarding place, for it must be 
remembered that the “blue-eyed” themselves pro- 
fessed to be boarders in the house which was 
owned and run by an old woman and her daughter. 
But the stranger who was a detective could get 
no board in the house. He was refused not be- 
caus-e anybody knew he was a detective, but be- 
cause the house was always full when strangers 
applied. 

The hack driver realized that he must gain en- 
trance to the house in some way. One day when 
he passed the house he saw the cellar window 
open. At night-fall it was still open. When he 
was sure that no one saw him he slipped through 
the opening and hid behind some boxes. He hardly 


270 


THE SNAKE IS BROKEN. 


knew what he could do or learn in the cellar, but 
the suspicions of the agency were fixed on that 
house simply from what he had told them and 
from what they had learned elsewhere to confirm 
what he said. 

Whilst he was trying to think what chances he 
had of not being caught and perhaps instantly 
shot if he would secrete himself in a room up- 
stairs, he heard the door above, open. A man, one 
of the ^‘blue-eyed’’ came down and carefully shut 
the grate and window through which he himself 
had come less than ten minutes before. This did 
not in the least alarm our friend; for he knew 
that he could open what the other had shut; but 
he was not prepared for what immediately fol- 
lowed. He heard a slight noise ; but in the dark- 
ness he could not see what caused it. The ^ ‘ blue- 
eyed ’ ^ had been plainly visible when he shut grate 
and window, for the arc light in the street illumi- 
nated his face ; but where he now was he could not 
be seen. Whilst the colored detective was strain- 
ing his eyes to see, a bright light seemed to come 
from the earth beneath and in the light the blue- 
eyed’^ seemed to sink into the bowels of the earth. 
There was a sharp grating sound and whir, and 
the light disappeared, and the cellar was as silent 
as the grave. 

We need not tell our reader that the detective 
was elated in fact thrilled, with joy at having 
made the most important discovery of his life. In 


THE SNAKE IS BROKEN. 


271 


less than five minutes he was out of the cellar by 
the way he entered, and he was in no way par- 
ticular who saw him come out. Fortunately no 
one saw him. In ten minutes more he had writ- 
ten the following telegram and sent it : ‘ ‘ My Dear 
Nippers, Am dying to see you. Come at once. 
Sambo.’’ 

The gentleman addressed was none other than 
the head of the Agency in New York. He knew 
what the telegram meant, and by morning of that 
same night he was well on his way to meet Sambo. 
AYhen he arrived Sambo met him and together 
they went to the same hotel from which Gregory 
had disappeared three weeks before. The eyes of 
Nippers dilated as Sambo showed him his ‘‘find” 
in language as significant as it was terse and to 
the point. 

When he had finished Nippers slapped him on 
the back and almost hugged him with delight. The 
local police were soon ready for the search; but 
tried to make light of Sambo’s discovery by say- 
ing that they had searched, and carefully searched 
that same cellar within the last six months. 

When they rang the bell at the “boarding 
house” of the “blue-eyed three” a colored girl ^ 
met them. Without saying a word to her they en- 
tered the house and went straight toward the cel- 
lar door. The old proprietor of the house met 
them in the kitchen and at once flew into a tower- 
ing rage at this their second intrusion within six 


272 


THE SNARE IS BROKEN. 


montlis. ^^She would see that damage would be 
paid her for the disrepute into which they were 
bringing honest people. 

Without designing a word of reply one of the 
six policemen remained upstairs at the cellar door, 
with revolver in hand. The other five and the two 
detectives went down stairs. They found the cel- 
lar precisely as they had left it six months before. 
They tried to raise the steel disk from its place 
under the water spigot, but it would not come. 
They opened the spigot, but no water came out of 
it. This assured them that the spigot was there 
for ^ ‘ ornament, ^ ’ as Sambo said, and not ‘‘for 
business.’’ They opened their dark lanterns which 
illuminated the cellar brilliantly, although the day 
light from without made objects visible. They 
examined the disk under the hydrant carefully. It 
seemed to lie in a cast-iron case which in no way 
held it, so far as they could discover. They 
searched the cement floor, until one of them ex- 
citedly said, ‘ ‘ I have it, ” as he held in his hand a 
little block of cement and pointed to a little square 
of wood at the bottom of the place left vacant by 
the removal of the cement block. Another of the 
policemen pressed the end of his mace on the wood 
and immediately the disk under the spigot began 
to sink into a dark cavern, for this time there was 
no flood of light to pour out of the abyss. 

Policeman, as a rule act with caution when they 
scent danger. They did not crowd each other to 


THE SNARE IS BROKEN. 


273 


spring down the hole left by the disappearing 
disk; but they did jostle each other to be first to 
look down, especially when they could hear no 
sound from beneath. Finding that they could not 
see anything they lowered a light. There lay be- 
neath the light, the iron disk on a polished oak 
floor; but nothing more, for the ceiling was too 
thick to admit a view of the apartment. Almost 
immediately one of their number volunteered to 
descend, but before he could swing himself into 
the hole Sambo was already suspended with noth- 
ing visible but his black fingers clutching the 
cement and iron rim in the floor where the search- 
ers stood. In a moment his hands let go and he 
landed on the bottom twelve feet beneath the floor 
on which he had stood a moment before. He was 
followed by the policeman who had volunteered to 
go before Sambo. Then another and another fol- 
lowed. The New Yorker was the last to descend. 
Two of the men remained in the cellar above. The 
brilliant lights which they carried in their hands 
revealed to them a room of about fourteen feet 
each way. The oak floor was polished but bare in 
every part. In the center of the floor stood a table 
with a number of galvanic jars connected to each 
other by wires. There were such tools and ap- 
pliances as might be found in the laboratory of 
any electrician, scattered upon the table. There 
were two chairs at the table. In one corner of the 
room stood buzzing away, the oxy^hydrogen ma- 
ts 


274 


THE SNARE IS BROKEN. 


chine of which we have spoken. The sides of the 
chamber were finished in oak skillfully paneled. 
No one was to be seen, and, aside from the noise 
of the generator, all was silent. 

The policemen thought that there was nothing 
beyond what they saw; but not so the detectives. 
It is true, the place looked like the den of an in- 
ventor who might be excused for being beneath 
the floor of a cellar, for a number of reasons. 
That what they saw was the work of genius they 
did not doubt; but they were unwilling to believe 
with the policemen, that the place contained no 
other secrets. The oak paneling looked innocent 
enough; but why should even a genius spend so 
much money on the walls of a subterranean apart- 
ment? 

They sat long and anxiously awaiting the ap- 
pearance of some one other than their own com- 
pany. They examined carefully the floor and the 
paneling, but found nothing except the big screws 
which seemed to fasten the paneling to the sides 
and floor and ceiling. Had they taken the precau- 
tion to press on any one of these there would have 
been a marvelous transformation, as we have al- 
ready learned. Finally they decided that three of 
their number should remain whilst the others 
would find the owner or owners of the place in 
which they were. 

When they tried to get out they found that there 
was no ladder. The great steel disk still lay at the 


THE SNARE IS BROKEN. 


275 


bottom with the steel tapes attached. They rea- 
soned that there ought to be some way to make 
it ascend. Finally it occurred to them that by 
pressing the little wooden block the disk might be 
made to move. The men above tried it, and imme- 
diately the disk arose and they were shut in. It 
was not long until it again descended. Finally 
one tried to stand upon it, and when the button 
was pressed it ascended with the same apparent 
ease with a man standing upon it, as when it was 
empty. 

When they made inquiry from the women in the 
kitchen who owned the subterranean rooms these 
worthies told them that they knew very little about 
the room. They had never been in it. The owner 
who had fitted it up at great expense, and who 
spent much of his time in it in study, was in New 
York, and would not be home for a week. With 
this the men left their companions, saying that 
they would be back in an hour. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 


PERSECUTED FOR 

RIGHTEOUSNESS SAKE.” 




The plague of the demon-locusts continued for 
five long months. We say long months advisedly, 
for time never drags more wearily than when each 
tick of the pendulum brings with it its own new 
thrill of pain. Although the affliction in no case 
was fatal it entailed pain and suffering 

than possibly any plague which swept its victims 
into eternity by the thousands. At the end of five 
months no demon-locusts were anywhere to be 
seen. They disappeared more suddenly than they 
had come. What was perhaps more remarkable, 
those who were afflicted recovered with their dis- 
appearance. Those who had been stung a month 
before were well at the same time that those who 
had been afflicted only a day. 

As the days lengthened into weeks and months, 
and there was no reappearance of this or any of 
the former calamities mentioned in this volume, 
men began to have confidence in themselves and in 
(276) 


PEBSECUTED FOB BIGHTEOUSNESS SAKE. 277 

nature. As the autumn of the summer which mark- 
ed the disappearance of the last plague drew nigh, 
there was the old-time haze in the far horizon, and 
the sky at noon-day had the same deep blue as 
when the old men were boys. There was now the 
same delicious sunshine as there had been before 
the deep darkness which was the monitor of all 
the woe through which humanity had passed. The 
gentle showers brought the old-time refreshing 
to field and flower, and the starry nights, the old 
time peace and rest. As the autumn wore on the 
ripe, rich tint of the cornfield over the boundless 
prairie and hill side, the deep brown of the chest- 
nut and the red and gold of gum and hickory 
brought back the deep, sweet, dream-life of former 
days. 

About this time an editorial appeared in the 
chief daily of the great city where dwelled the 
characters who figure in this volume. It was so 
entirely different from the remarks contained in 
other publications and describes the state of 
morals and religion of the times so well that we 
cannot refrain from quoting it at length. All of 
the papers of the day contained a cheap humor in 
which they indulged at the expense of those who 
had suffered most in the days gone by. Their wit 
was designed to make light of the experiences of 
the world during the days described in this book. 
The following is the article to which we have re- 
ferred: ‘‘Now that peace, hope and prosperity 


278 PERSECUTED FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS SAKE. 

have returned we hear and read many unbecoming 
remarks which carry with them the little sense 
and irreverence of those who make them, rather 
j than the humor they try to air. These remarks all 
make light of the calamities which we so well re- 
member. The same lips that a few months ago 
were thin and drawn because of suffering from 
supernatural visitations now speak lightly of the 
beings which caused them the anguish. This to 
say the least, is unbecoming and foolish, for we 
know neither the day or the hour when we may be 
called upon to endure worse suffering, if we re- 
pent not. 

What is still more remarkable, men seem to 
have entirely departed from the worship of God 
and reverence for His name. It is true, the sun 
worshippers, the cult which for many years has 
flourished increasingly in greater New York is 
still flourishing. These all flourish to-day. The 
Spiritualists, the Economies, the Theosophists 
and the Angel Dancers are still with us and are 
attracting to their ranks thousands. The founders 
of these cults were poor men when they began 
their teaching. They died in opulence. Unlike 
the lowly Nazar ene who died on the cross to save 
men, these teachers of impure religion and worse 
morals, lived to themselves, and lived moreover, 
to blast the hopes and morals of thousands. 

What have these religions done for humanity? 
It is true they have promised much; but what 


PEESECUTED EOE KIGHTEOUSNESS SAKE. 


279 


have they done? Have they thrown one ray of 
certainty upon the boundless future to which we 
are hastening? Have they made one revelation 
that has really brightened the hopes and lifted 
the burdens of humanity? What of truth they 
contain they have stolen from the great source of 
truth, ‘Hhe pillar and ground of faith, the un- 
changing Word of God. 

We calmly hoped that after all the supernatural 
visitation and the calamities in nature which the 
Bible foretold ages ago with startling accuracy, 
and through which the world passed within the 
last three years, men would once more return to 
the faith and worship of their fathers. In all this 
we are disappointed. There are more idolaters in 
New York to-day than there were in the land of 
Judah in the days of Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion 
and conquest, more infidels and free thinkers than 
there were in Kome in the days of Christ. 

The Christian church has catered to these 
modem cults and isms until she has lost her power 
over the lives of men. Her preachers in many in- 
stances, preach a gospel, but it is not the old-time 
Gospel which is the power of God unto the salva- 
tion of souls. This kind of preaching has depleted 
her pews of listeners as well as worshipers. 

This has told fearfully upon the morals of so- 
ciety. We boast of our triumphs in the abolition 
of slavery; but whilst it is true slavery has long 
since disappeared in name, its actual practice in 


280 PERSECUTED FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS SAKE. 

the avenues of greed and lust, still flourishes. 
Communism, socialism^ nihilism, systematic pecu- 
lation and fraud are, all of them, new forms of the 
old system, for they too, trafiic in the souls and 
bodies of men. What is more they threaten to up- 
root the very foundations of society, paralyze gov- 
ernment, throw down the marriage altar and sub- 
vert the home. 

Where these great systems flourish we cannot 
hope for good morals. As could be expected, they 
have already told fearfully upon the state of 
morals. They have in reality subverted the very 
foundations of society. This is seen in the fact that 
we make light of crime, because our conscience is 
seared. When arrests are made we make trial by 
jury which was once one of the safeguards of jus- 
tice, a mere farce, and so subvert justice. This 
cheap moral practice has been substituted for the 
morals preached and practiced by the lowly Na- 
zarene and His Church in the days of her triumph 
and glory, by the cults which have become the fads 
of the day. 

We of this paper adhere to the old-time Faith, 
although our practice may fall far short of its 
high and holy standards. We believe that there is 
a Grod who is above all gods, that Jesus Christ was 
His only begotten Son, ^manifest in the flesh, 
justifled in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached 
unto the heathen, believed on in the world, re- 
ceived up in glory. ^ We believe moreover that this 


PEESECUTED FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS SAKE. 281 


same Jesus will come again, and when He does 
come He will put these advocates of cults and new 
religions to everlasting shame and contempt. 

These sentiments, we have said, were published 
in one of the great dailies of New York. They 
were read by the people who had been pleading 
for religious toleration and freedom of the press 
and speech. As they read they realized that there 
was some one bold enough to criticise their faith 
and practice and condemn it. For once Angel Danc- 
ers and Theosophists who always cordially hated 
each other, stood side by side with Spiritualists 
in condenming the man who had dared to criticize 
them. Their rage increased with their discussion. 
Finally it was secretly determined to destroy the 
home of the paper, and if that would not answer 
their purpose, the life of the editor. This these 
lovers of liberty and freedom of thought and 
speech determined to do. 

Ten o’clock, the hour when all their meetings 
would be adjourned, was fixed for the work of de- 
struction. On the appointed time and date they 
quietly marched to the building. They came in 
great companies. They seemed unarmed, but on 
a given signal they hurled bombs through the 
windows and doors and wrecked both the building 
and the machinery in the building. Then they 
separated and went to their homes well pleased 
with their night ’s work. 

It is needless to say, that the evening daily in 


282 PEBSECUTED FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS SAKE. 


question did not appear the next evening or ever 
afterwards. The editor was warned never to show 
himself in public, or to write anything criticizing 
any of the cults which had done so much for lib- 
erty, for striking the shackles from those bound 
by superstition and priest craft ! 



CHAPTER XXIX. 


( r- - 

“The Path of the Just is as the 

Shining Light that Shineth More 
and More unto the Perfect Day.” 

V 

As we walk along the banks of streams we see 
how the rivulet wears smooth and glistening the 
hardest rock. Here and there the stream has cut 
its way through huge granite boulders and sifted 
the mica over many square feet of its bed. So, 
very much, is the influence of a pure life upon 
sinful surroundings. There was not a gutter snipe 
in all the Bowery or on Grand Street who did not 
lift the rag he called his cap to Grace Dolent as 
she passed in and out in the discharge of her self- 
imposed duty. Years of kind treatment and tender 
solicitude had endeared her to all with whom she 
came in contact. The fact that she discovered the 
white soul beneath many a dirty and greasy ex- 
terior made her love her work. It is true, to And 
and fit the souls of these people for heaven was a 
work slower and more delicate than that which 
the sculptor does when he fashions the marble 
block into the image of an angel. She was one of 
( 288 ) 


284 PATH OF THE JUST IS AS SHINING LIGHT. 

God^s sculptors. He furnished the rude clay and 
she by the help and guidance of the Spirit, 
moulded it for the heavenly galleries for the ad- 
miration of angels, and the glory of Him who died 
so as to make her work possible. 

But Grace ^s influence was felt not only in the 
slums; wherever she went her life gladdened and 
cheered. We have seen her bearing toward Mrs. 
DeLisle and her husband during the long weeks of 
his suffering. In those weeks her reading and her 
prayers won the heart of Mrs. DeLisle for Christ. 
When Grace left finally for the Home, the Bible 
was a new book to Mrs. DeLisle. It was a long 
time before she could divest herself of her self- 
righteousness and come in her nakedness and pov- 
erty to her Master to receive the garment of His 
righteousness and the riches of His grace; but 
when she did come she received a double portion 
of the Spirit. From that day to the end of their 
sojourn in the world Grace saw in Mrs. DeLisle 
the richest trophy she had won for her Master, 
and received as her reward in this world the truest 
and most devoted friend woman ever had. She 
had always done much to help Talitha Cumi, but 
she had never been humble and loving enough to 
speak to any of the fallen and put her arms about 
them in love. It was an easy matter to do it now. 
Now she could pray in the little meetings in the 
mission. Now she could tell the poor girls how 
Christ had found beneath her jewels and silks the 


PATH OF THE JUST IS AS SHINING LIGHT. 285 

heart she had so long withheld. She said she was 
as great a trophy of Christ's love and Grace Do- 
lent 's sympathy as any of them could be. 

No one can ever measure the degree of power 
Miss Dolent had by the help of her Master over the 
proud, erring soul of Mr. DeLisle during his sick- 
ness; but when he returned to his old haunts he 
became as eager for gold and power as ever. How- 
ever worldly and wicked he may have become his 
respect for Miss Dolent never abated in all his life 
of loneliness and sorrow. 

It was about this time that the body of their 
only son was found along the railroad. He had 
been picked up by a city missionary when he was 
wretched and ragged. For sveral months he con- 
tinued in the mission, leading an honest and sober 
life. He gave many a proof of his sincere conver- 
sion, and his testimonies in the little meetings 
^Hor men only" were used of God for the conver- 
sion of several who like himself, had fallen very 
low, but not so low as to be beyond the Saviour’s 
reach. Finally he wrote a letter telling his mother 
that he had secured a job of flagman on a freight, 
and that after a while he would come back to take 
his old place in her heart and their home. He also 
told her of his marriage to the woman whom 
Talitha Cumi had rescued, and prayed his moth- 
er’s forgiveness. 

The letter was accompanied by a note from the 
city missionary who had snatched him like a 


286 PATH OF THE JUST IS AS SHINING LIGHT. 

brand from the burning. In this note the mis- 
sionary spoke of the sincerity of her son’s con- 
version, and of the many good qualities the Spirit 
in his work of grace had revivified and brightened 
in the soul of her son. Mrs. DeLisle was over- 
joyed by the receipt of this letter. She wrote him 
a long letter in which she described her own birth 
into the kingdom of grace. She also frankly and 
freely forgave him, and told him that she would 
intercede for him with his father. We can well 
imagine the grief that she felt when she received 
the news of his death. 

The railroad company not knowing anything of 
his family, buried him in the cemetery adjoining 
the town near which he had lost his life. His father 
afterwards had his body brought to the cemetery 
in which his kindred slept and erected a neat monu- 
ment over his lowly sleeping place. Thus ended 
the career of the man who might have had so much 
in this life, and who lost it all because he mis- 
apprehended that life is a mission, and that its re- 
ward lies at the end. Each day well lived brings 
the reward not only nearer but makes it larger and 
richer. He did not learn until too late, that to live 
long and well one must live slowly. 

We have said nothing concerning Dr. Knowit 
since his recovery from the encounter with the 
demon-locust. He fully recovered only after the 
plague disappeared. No one ever learned what 
conclusion he came to regarding the nature of the 


PATH OF THE JUST IS AS SHINING LIGHT. 287 


horrid creatures of whose reality he was thor- 
oughly convinced. He must have considered them 
a strange visitation permitted of God for the 
chastisement of evil-doers and unbelievers; for 
several weeks before the shapes ceased to haunt 
humanity, he sent his resignation to his Church 
Council in which he said that he felt that he must 
have a long rest from the duties of his office. He 
begged their forgiveness for not preaching the 
Gospel more fervently. 

Soon afterwards his furniture and library were 
taken to an auction room and sold. His trusted 
housekeeper who was old and infirm, he pensioned 
by putting several thousand dollars on interest in 
a trust company for her sole benefit. What was 
most remarkable, he was never ^‘at home’^ to any 
who called to see him after he had resigned his 
church. When he quit the old home in which so 
many men of God had lived, he went away telling 
no one whither he was going. Whither he went 
and where he finally took up his abode, or whether 
he perished in some great catastrophe shortly 
after the depature from his people, no one ever 
learned. There is to be seen some excuse for this 
utter disappearance in the awful events which oc* 
curred after the times described in these pages. 

There are two other characters concerning 
whose strange misfortune we have said so much. 
We refer to Mr. and Mrs. Gregory. We must de- 
scribe their experiences on the day in which ‘Hhe 


288 PATH OF THE JUST IS AS SHINING LIGHT. 

blue-eyed three threatened to murder them at 
five o^clock provided they did not comply with 
their wishes. It was a strange fate which brought 
the detectives to the cellar as the three left the 
Gregories to themjselves. As the blue-eyed were 
leaving there was the sound of a bell, which the 
Gregories had never heard before. In a moment 
more the blue-eyed’^ rushed hither and thither, 
and an oak partition which they had never seen 
before, unfolded across the rooms and entirely 
closed about two-thirds of the place from the front 
of the room where the disk was left down and 
which comers and goers used constantly. There 
began to be a strange odor in the little parlor. 
This brought on a drowsiness which the Gregories 
could not resist. The last they remembered was 
the passing of the three into a closet-like room 
after they saw that the great oak partition was 
in place. Mrs. Gregory saw the little panel which 
formed the door to the room in which the blue- 
eyed took refuge, close, then she fell into a sleep 
or unconsciousness from which she was not 
aroused until she felt someone rubbing and chaf- 
ing her hands and brow. 

We left three of the men who were trying to 
solve the mystery of the underground apartment 
in the act of quitting the house, promising to re- 
turn within an hour. They came in less than half 
that time. They had two axes and a saw ; but these 
tools were not needed, for during their absence 





C’OXSUMMATION AND TRANSLA'I'ION.” — Tins Picture Shows How the Bride of the Devie and the 

liRIDE OF CllRIST WiLL AT IjAST Be SEPARATED. TiIE BrIDE OF CllRIST Is CauGHT Up 
TO Be Forever With the Lord; the Bride of the Demi. Remains for a W hile 
JjOnger Until She Is Snatched Into the Bottomless Pit. — P age 


PATH OF THE JUST IS AS SHINING LIGHT. 289 

Sambo had gone to removing screws with a big 
knife and had found the door slide as he touched 
what he thought to be the head of an ordinary 
screw. By the time he returned the three left in 
the room had all the cross partitions out of the 
way and had discovered Mr. and Mrs. Gregory 
and were doing their best to revive them. In a 
short time they succeeded and all made prepara- 
tions to get out of the place when the Gregories 
just recalled that ‘‘the blue-eyed three’’ were be- 
hind one of the panels. This panel did not yield 
from the outside although the button was pressed 
again and again. An ax was brought and the panel 
demolished. The neat room was disclosed, but it 
was empty! Then Mrs. Gregory insisted on leav- 
ing the awful place. 

In this, our last word with regard to “the blue- 
eyed three” and their “haven of rest,” let it suf- 
fice to say that the bell Mr. and Mrs. Gregory 
heard ringing was an alarm for such an occasion 
like this. It had its connection with the pantry, 
and was rung as soon as the officers came into the 
kitchen. The housekeeper had been instructed 
never to ring it except when she was sure that the 
“haven” was being visited by an “investigation 
committee. ’ ’ 

The “blue-eyed three,” by means of another 
door escaped to another apartment in the “rest.” 
I think we have told our readers that the panels 
separating the different rooms were sliding panels. 

19 


290 PATH OF THE JUST IS AS SHINING LIGHT. 

This was the reason that they were not found in 
the room to which Mrs. Gregory saw them go. 

When Mrs. Gregory insisted that she and her 
husband leave the place immediately whilst there 
seemed opportunity to escape, three of the ofl&cers 
and the New York detective remained in the 
‘ ‘ haven determined to find out what was to be 
seen. It was agreed that if they did not report at 
police headquarters before evening, a detail would 
be sent to relieve them. 

After the three police and the detective were 
alone they kept perfectly still, behind one of the 
panels. It was only a few moments before the 
‘‘blue-eyed’’ appeared coming out of what seemed 
to be the solid wall. When they were connnanded 
to throw up their hands they did so without a 
word. The police and detective approached them, 
one of them covering the “blue-eyed” with his re- 
volver whilst the other two held the hand-cuffs 
ready to slip them on. 

^Yliat followed was done so quickly that your 
reporter cannot accurately describe the scene. He 
knows that when the relief came that evening, it 
was compelled to force the front door of the house 
and pry from its fastenings the iron disk which 
guarded the entrance to the “haven.” They found 
the three police and the detective unconscious at 
the foot of the exit. The hand-cuffs which they 
had brought for the “blue-eyed” were on their 


PATH OP THE JUST IS AS SHINING LIGHT. 291 


own wrists. It was more than a week before they 
could talk coherently. 

All that was ever heard of the ‘‘blue-eyed’’ was 
that the same afternoon of the raid three gentle- 
men of the same stature but dressed differently 
and with differently colored hair bought tickets 
for New York. The women of the house were sen- 
tenced to long terms of imprisonment. 


Q 


CHAPTER XXX. 


IT WAS IN THE 


DAYS OF NOAH " 


XJJOOiO 


We have come to narrate the closing events in 
the career of the characters of this narrative. We 
have endeavored faithfully to trace the forces of 
work upon their lives. It remains now to be seen 
how the final events shaped themselves in their 
lives very much after the manner in which they 
utilized their opportunities. Nearly two years 
have passed since Mr. and Mrs. Gregory returned 
to New York after their deliverance from the 
Haven of Rest.’^ Mr. Gregory and Mr. DeLisle 
always friendly, are now boon companions. They 
are allied in business and pleasure. Their peculiar 
relations serve to keep both of them purer than 
they had formerly been. Their fortunes already 
largo, are constantly being augmented by their 
gains. 

Mrs. Gregory is absorbed in social duties. So- 
ciety’s charms and foibles have more completely 
captured her than did the ^ ‘ blue-eyed three. ’ ’ Her 
( 292 ) 


AS IT WAS IN THE DAYS OF NOAH. 


293 


pious motlier almost daily expostulated with her 
and implored her to profit by her mother ^s ex- 
ample. She tells her that the great regret of her 
life is that she herself spent so much of her time 
and money for that which is not bread and that 
which satisfieth not. ^ ’ 

Just when men begin to think that the state of 
•society will now be undisturbed by strange and 
direful visitations, there comes the report that a 
great plague has broken out in the Old World. 
Men and women are swept to the grave in almost 
untold numbers. It is not long before it makes its 
appearance in the New World, and the attacks are 
so sudden and the struggle of the victim so brief 
that the like has never been heard before. Those 
attacked have no way of escape. Everyone at- 
tacked succumbs. The plague does not seem con- 
tagious, but selects its victims among the strong 
as well as the weak ; among the young as well as 
the old. It invades families and communities and 
selects its vicitms, and just as those remaining 
fear that the place will be depopulated there is 
not another case. Medical science which for years 
already has boasted to be able to reduce the num- 
ber of diseases and permit man to remain on the 
earth for a long period of years had found no 
remedy to avert the final catastrophe, and for this 
new calamity can suggest no remedies. 

What was true of the helplessness of medical 
science was true of the other sciences. The mete- 


294 


AS IT WAS IN THE DAYS OF NOAH. 


orologist long before learned to trace the origin 
and direction of storms, cold and hot waves, and 
to some degree, was able by his forecast to help 
and warn ; but cyclones and tornados remained as 
destructive as ever. Agricultural bureaus had for 
years studied the nature of the diseases of plant 
life and suggested remedies, and thus saved vege- 
tables and fruit trees from destruction; but with 
it all, whole districts became denuded of orchards 
and some kinds of fruit were almost wholly ex- 
tinct. 

Men had perfected instruments for the foretell- 
ing and recording of earthquakes; but with all 
their skill, they had not been able to avert one 
calamity or give warning in time to save human 
lives and property. 

With all the boasted advancement it is true of 
this civilization, of this age, as of all ages, that it 
sprang from the ashes of former civilizations 
overthrown by judgment and calamity. The 
science of Tubal Cain culminatd in the construc- 
tion of the Ark, the music of Jubal in the bitter 
wail of the perishing; and all in the destruction 
of the Flood. The tower of Babel, the consumma- 
tion of architecture, culture and skill, culminated 
in the confusion of tongues and exiled into sav- 
agery. The opportunities and oppulence of the 
Louis of France terminated on the guillotine and 
the horrors of the French Eevolution. The Eliza- 
bethan age in literature and the frivolous luxuries 


AS IT WAS IN THE DAYS OF NOAH. 


295 


of the Charles’ terminated under the heel of the 
uncouth, yet stolid and right-loving Cromwell. 
Out of each defeat come victory, out of each back- 
set, progress. 

Out of all the misery and sorrow, dirth and 
death, of the period we are describing, there will 
come the age for which philosophers have hoped, 
of which prophets prophesied and poets sung. 

‘^Out of it,” did I say? From beyond it and 
out of the far-above-it, the Throne of the universe, 
there comes the period, ^‘When men beat their 
swords into plow shares and their spears into 
pruning hooks — ^when righteousness fills the earth 
as the waters cover the sea.” 

One evening when the plague had abated Mr. 
DeLisle seemed more thoughtful than usual and 
remained in the library. Mrs. DeLisle found him 
there and reading his feelings, she sat down be- 
side him and taking his unresisting hands into 
both of her own she said: — ^‘Husband, you and 
I have certainly had an eventful life. On every 
hand death has severed the marriage tie ; but for 
some wise reason we have been spared. You know 
our married life has not always been tenderness 
and love. I am sure we would get more out of 
what of life remains if we would live nearer to 
God.” 

All this timie Mr. DeLisle looked to the wall op- 
posite and gave no more evidence that he heard 
what his wife was saying than does the stone idol 


296 


AS IT WAS IN THE DAYS OF NOAH. 


give evidence that he hears the prayers of the 
suppliants that prostrate themselves before him. 

‘ ^ I was down at the mission to-day, ’ ’ continued 
Mrs. DeLisle. ‘‘Grace Dolent says the end is 
near. She says any hour may occur what Christ 
says in Matthew 24, 40-41, ‘Then shall two be in 
the field; the one shall be taken and the other 
left.^ She says that refers to the Jews where the 
one believes in Christ and the other does not, but 
it also refers to any family in which only some be- 
lieve. The believing shall be taken. ’ ^ 

As Mrs. DeLisle uttered these words her hus- 
band seemed to have come to himself. With a 
derisive smile he withdrew his hand from his 
wife’s and arose, saying; “I guess I’ll be taken 
now,” and was gone. Mrs. DeLisle heard his re- 
ceding foot falls in the hall and heard him closing 
the outside door. She little thought that she had 
seen her husband for the last time. 

Fiction tells of a knight who left his betrothed 
to go to the Holy Land to help wrest the Holy 
City from beneath the crescent of the barbarous 
Turk. He promised on his return to make his be- 
trothed his happy bride. The time set for return 
seemed long past ; but nevertheless she kept burn- 
ing nightly on the shores a beacon light to guide 
her absent lover to his homie port, and to reveal 
to her eager gaze the white sails of his approach- 
ing ship. Wlien the less steadfast of his friends 


AS IT WAS IN THE DAYS OF NOAH. 297 

had long ceased to hope for his coming, her vigil 
fires still burnt despite their cruel jests. She was 
rewarded; for one night when all had gone to 
sleep, she saw the glare of her beacon reflected on 
the dove-like sails of an in-coming ship. A few 
hours more and he, the valiant knight, the long ex- 
pected lover, grasped his betrothed to his bosom. 
The nuptuals were immediately celebrated on 
board his brave ship, and long before morning the 
white sails had disappeared on the horizon, bear- 
ing with them the brave knight and his happy 
bride to a fairer clime. 

That night following Mrs. DeLisle’s interview 
with her husband in the library, the inhabitants 
were folded in sleep as usual, save where the lash 
of passion or the goad to gain kept them awake ; 
or the souls of the faithful commended themselves 
and their loved ones to God. But before morning 
the voice of the Bridegroom called them. ‘^In a 
moment, in the twinkle of an eye^^ all His own 
were changed into glorious formis like unto him- 
self. From hamlet and city, hovel and palace, the 
beggar’s straw and in some instances the prison- 
er’s cot, they came to join that great company 
which no man can number. There was no time for 
farewells or benedictions, or the expressions of 
vain regrets or exhortations. For all who on the 
morrow missed their loved ones, the doors to the 


Note.— Lectures on Apocalypse— Dr. Seiss. 


298 


AS IT WAS 1 ^ THE DAYS OF NOAH. 


marriage were shut, the first resurrection was 
passed and they were not saved. After that night 
the gentle matron of Talitha Cumi, the comely 
Grace Dolent was never again seen in the old 
haunts of sin and suffering. 

It remains for us to take one look at those who 
remain, that great company which were neither 
convinced by argument, melted by love, or moved 
to repentance by judgments. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 


“He That Is Unjust Let Him Be 
Unjust Still, emd He Which Is 
Filthy Let Him Be Filthy Still.” 


We have seen how science adopted theories in 
her attempts to account for the physical universe, 
which were for the most part a negation of what 
the Bible teaches. The theories become of vital 
importance to mortal and spiritual life, because 
they destroy a man^s faith in the Bible as an au- 
thority in matters, moral and spiritual. 

The school next to the home is the most potent 
factor in shaping the destiny of the race. When 
the church had lost her power over the home, the 
home life was robbed of the moral and spiritual 
forces so potent in the life of a community. Un- 
fortunately the church herself lost her power over 
the very school she had established and the men 
she had educated. Had the schoolmen been con- 
tented in the simple propagation of their so-called 
scientific theories, the harm they did would not 
have been so far-reaching and lasting in the life 
of their disciples; but in their delusion they be- 
( 299 ) 



300 


HE THAT IS UNJUST LET BE UNJUST. 


lieved and taught the lie in the realm of moral and 
spiritual matters. The very foundation of family 
life was menaced when these men who utterly de- 
nied the Mosaic account of creation, also taught 
that, ‘‘marriage is purely a civil contract which 
should be terminated at the will of either party, 
and that the church should have no more to do 
with it than in the conveying of real estate.’^ 
“Marriage is not divine, men and women are not 
joined together by the degrees of any God. (The 
utterance of a celebrated sociologist in a church 
endowed university.) But Jesus said, “What 
therefore God hath joined together, let no man 
put asunder . ’ ^ (Matthew 19 :6) . 

They discredited divine providence and the pow- 
er of prayer by asserting that, “no eminent phil- 
osopher believes that an external God has ever in- 
terfered in human or national affairs.’’ One can 
scarcely conceive anything more sacrilegious un- 
less it be their view with regard to the being of 
God. One of them says, “The least creatures of 
all mortals have more dignity and value than even 
an almighty God, as that being is popularly con- 
ceived.” They also taught that “human worship 
is no more gratification to God and has no more 
influence than for a chemist to chant a litany to 
change the power of hydrogen. ’ ’ 

One of these same teachers said, “A revival of 
religion is a social bane and more dangerous to 
the life of society than drunkenness. As a sot man 


HE THAT IS UNJUST LET BE UNJUST. 301 

falls below the brute; as a revivalist he sinks 
lower than a sot.’’ (‘^Christianity in the Cruci- 
ble,” Cosmopolitan Magazine, August, 1909). 
They, for the greater part, believed in the im- 
mortality of the soul, not because they credited 
the resurrection of Christ or the teaching of 
prophets or apostles. They were pursuaded to 
have faith in a future life by means of their inter- 
views with what they supposed, their deceased 
friends and ancestors; but by what was really a 
bold and unholy consultation with demons, a pro- 
cess upon which they insisted in defiance of the 
threats of Jehovah. These demoniacal interviews 
they dignified with the name, ‘ ‘ Psychic Eesearch. ’ ’ 
Of the whole Word of God, with its poetry and 
its history, its science and philosophy, its divine 
incarnate Redeemer and its promised salvation, 
these teachers regardless of the seed they were 
sowing, boldly declared: “History and criticism 
have made the Bible a new book, or rather a col- 
lection of books, written for the most part we 
know not by what authors or at what dates and 
put together as a Bible we know not on what prin- 
ciples.” “All the old land-marks, Moses, Solomon, 
Job, are gone and the resistless sea of criticism 
has engulfed religion with the records it once 
adored.” No wonder therefore that there came “a 
falling otf in church attendance, the abandoning 
of family worship, the giving over of Sunday, more 
and more, to pleasure and labor, the separation of 


302 HE THAT IS. UNJUST LET BE UNJUST. 

religion from secular education.^’ (Wall Street 
Journal). From out this abandonment of Holy 
things came a generation as uninstructed as our 
fathers were instructed in the Bible. So the church 
herself was secularized. And so satan entered 
and ruled more and more in the affections of the 
people. 

Never before has the human intellect arrogated 
to itself such divine prerogatives; never has in- 
fidelity, not even in Chorazin and Bethsadia, so 
wantonly flaunted itself in the garb of learning 
and philosophy in defiance of God and heaven. 
With such teachers in universities, such preachers 
as our Dr. Knowit became possible in the pulpit, 
such financiers as the men with *Hhe mark^’ could 
control the commerce of the world, such men as 
the ‘‘blue eyed-three’^ could become vampires in 
society. 

Infidelity in college and university, and apos- 
tacy in the pulpit, produced a social condition 
which with its strange admixture of refinement 
and ignorance, wisdom yet folly, gross vice 
glossed with morals, greed in its best charity, 
showed its real worth only after the great com- 
pany of true believers was divorced from the 
earth “ in a moment, in the twinkle of an eye, ’ ’ as 
portrayed in our last chapter. 

When Grace Dolent and that great company of 
true believers of which she was one and which had 
acted as the “salt of the earth,’’ had been caught 


HE THAT IS UNJUST LET BE UNJUST. 303 

up to be forever with the Lord as the Bride of 
Christ ; there was left on the earth a great multi- 
tude which we can designate by no better term 
than ‘^The DeviLs Bride. The DeviPs Bride 
therefore constitutes that great company of un- 
believers and workers of iniquity which are among 
us now and which have been with us in all ages. 
It is the company to whom Christ will say ‘ ‘ depart 
from me, ye cursed, into the lake of fire and brim- 
stone prepared for the Devil and his angels.’’ 
^^The Devil’s Bride” is an especially fitting cog- 
nomen for those who remained after God’s select 
were taken. This Devil’s Bride by his strange 
fascination and because of the hardened infidelity 
fostered by years of apostacy, was not moved to 
repentance under the most fearful judgments de- 
scribed in this book, and so she was kept in the 
chains forged by her own hands, for an experience 
so awful that this pen refrains from chronicling 
it, and a perdition so horrid that the son of God 
himself describes it as the ^‘second death.” 

Kind reader, take warning! the signs of the 
times point clearly to the fact that this great 
apostacy is near and that the consequent fearful 
events described in this book will soon come upon 
the children of unbelief. To whom do you belong 
—to Christ or Satan? Whose betrothed are you? 
Let your own conscience in the light of Scripture 
give you the answer. 

I FINIS I 






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